


Ship to Wreck

by Project_Icarus



Series: Long & Lost [1]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-15 21:19:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13621872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project_Icarus/pseuds/Project_Icarus
Summary: It's been fifteen whole years since Sam died and you never truly got over it. As it turns out, maybe you won't have to.





	1. Chapter 1

Your fingers have barely touched the cool chill of the wineglass when a hand lands on your shoulder. “You can put that on my tab,” Rafe Adler says to the bartender.

You jump in surprise. “Rafe!” You step aside to make room for him at the bar, wondering how exactly this interaction is going to go. Rafe can be very volatile.

“Hello, (Y/N),” he says, flashing you one of his winning smiles. He orders himself a drink. The silence stretches out awkwardly as you watch the bartender pour his whiskey.

“Thanks for this,” you say, taking a sip of your chardonnay rather than downing it like you want to.

He turns towards you, still smiling. “You’re very welcome, it’s just nice to see you up and about. I was very surprised to see you here,”

You can’t help but smile at the genuine warmth you’re getting from him. “Yeah, well, I just felt like getting all dressed up and buying myself something shiny. I thought it might cheer me up.” You shift a little so that the jewels on your dress catch the light. You’d forgotten how _nice_ it felt to make yourself look pretty and schmooze with the elites.

“Well, you look amazing. You really, really do.” He says, unabashedly raking his eyes over your form.

You flush with pride, “Thank you, Rafe, so do you,” you’re so pleased that he is being pleasant. You didn’t exactly part on the best of terms last time, but he seems to have gotten over it. You can guess why, though; it looks like Rafe is in the market for a certain ‘penitent thief’ artefact. “The St. Dismas cross,” you say, “that’s what you’re here for, right?”

He stiffens slightly, standing up straighter. “That’s right,” he says slowly, “what do you know about it?” his eyes narrow.

Suddenly you don’t feel so relaxed in his presence. The threat of danger zings up your spine, reminding you to always be on your toes with this man. It isn’t _entirely_ unpleasant.

“I just saw it when I was looking through the catalogue,” you say quickly, “it shocked me actually, to see it again after all this time. I didn’t even realise there was more than one,”

He eyes you intensely for a moment, before he seems satisfied with your answer. “I see,” he says at last. The two of you lapse into silence for a while before he speaks again. “Do you want to get a look at it? When I buy it I’ll be more than happy to show you, if you like.”

You imagine holding the cross in your hands, running your fingers over the carving of St. Dismas. You imagine throwing the damn thing into a wall and watching it shatter into a thousand pieces. No, you don’t want to see it. It would hurt too much, bring up too many painful memories. That piece of hollow wood and plate is what Sam died for.  
Now you’re thinking of Sam again, which is never good for your mood. It doesn’t hurt _quite_ the same as it used to, but the dull ache still rears its ugly head from time to time. It’s been fifteen years since he died and you can barely remember his face, but you still love him somewhere deep down in your broken heart. You’ve never met anyone else like him in your whole life, and you’ve never felt as loved or as _alive_ as you did when you were with him.

Suddenly being around Rafe is too much like old times and you excuse yourself back into the throng of partygoers. You ignore his annoyed expression and scan the crowd for another familiar face to escape to. With relief, you spot Victor Sullivan, another acquaintance from days long past but a slightly friendlier one at that. You meander through the crowd until you enter his field of view, smiling brightly at him. “Victor, hi!” You say, touching his arm in greeting.

He smiles warmly at you as he squeezes your hand in return. “(Y/N), it’s great to see you, darlin’. You look gorgeous,” he looks distracted for a moment, and kind of sad, before his roguish grin is back in place as if nothing had happened. “So, how you doin’? You feeling better?” he takes a puff on his cigar.

Your smile softens. “I’m doing okay,” you sip your wine and mull over how much you want to give away, “You know, I have my good days and bad days, but I’m all right,”

Just then Nadine Ross appears at Victor’s elbow and hands him a drink. The two of you have never officially met, but you know who she is immediately. Her reputation definitely precedes her.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she says, as if on cue.

“Allow me, ladies,” Victor says, “Nadine Ross, this is (Y/N) (L/N). (Y/N), this is Nadine,” he waves his cigar between the two of you as he makes the introductions. Nadine reaches out her hand and you shake it, smiling politely. The three of you trade pleasantries and stories for several minutes before everything turns sour as Rafe appears again. In mere moments you are reminded of all of the reasons that you and he will never be an item, and you stand resolutely by Victor’s side.

“And what about you?” Rafe says, rounding on you all of a sudden, his pleasant flirtatiousness from earlier all but forgotten, “are you in on this too?”

“Leave her out of this, Rafe,” Victor says immediately, “she has nothing to do with this and you know it,”

“You can have your stupid cross, I don’t care,” you say heatedly, beginning to sweat under the scrutiny.

Everything comes to a head when Rafe actually knocks the drink out of Victor’s hand, and Nadine scolds him harshly. Then finally the auctioneer announces the start of the bidding and the pair of them leave the two of you alone.

You turn to Victor, about to commiserate over how much of a dick Rafe can be, when he bids you excuse him and ducks away from you. You ignore the tiny pang of hurt as he walks away and decide that you _will_ get one little look at this cross, just to prove to yourself that you can do it. You follow the movement of the crowd until you find a place where you can see the items on display.

You can’t believe it when Victor actually starts bidding against Rafe! What does he want with the cross? And also, is he insane? While it is amusing to watch Rafe get more and more agitated, you have to wonder if it is worth it.

And then your heart stops.

There, off to the side, an arm’s reach away from the display table… It’s _Sam_.

Only, of course it isn’t. Sam is _dead_. He _died_.

Unbidden, your body begins to move. You push your way through the crowd, your eyes fixed to the waiter standing much too close to the St. Dismas cross…

The lights go out. The auctioneer tells everyone not to panic but how can you possibly stay calm when _Sam_ is perhaps mere feet from you? You try to keep moving but in the dark everyone is bumping into each other even without you trying to get between them. At last the emergency lights flicker on, but it’s too late. He’s gone. And so is the cross! As Rafe begins to yell, you whirl around, and you can’t find Victor in the crowd either. Connections are trying to form in your mind but you’re too frazzled to let them. There’s no keeping calm at this point either, as the room is locked down and the security begin their search for the thief.

Rafe is on the warpath and you haven’t decided if you want to call out to him or not when he storms right past you. Before you know what’s happening, you’re being swept along in the movement of the crowd as security lets you all go. You move along with them as not to be crushed, but your body is on autopilot as your mind is a million miles away. You hear gunshots not too far away and finally pull yourself together. You know attending any event at the Rossi Estate comes with certain risks attached, but you came anyway because you thought you could handle it. Well, damn it, you’re going to start handling your shit. Right now.

You slide into the driver’s seat of your Lamborghini and grip the steering wheel with white-knuckled fists, breathing heavily. You can have your little breakdown from the safety of your home, but not here. Not here. You do some yoga fire-breaths as you pull out of the parking lot and join the line of cars trying to get out. Of course, there’s only one word going through your mind, over and over.

_Sam_.


	2. Chapter 2

You sweep up the steps to your Mediterranean villa in a whirl of jewel-encrusted designer gown and fly through the front door. You throw your keys into an antique dish by the door and head straight to the kitchen to pour yourself a stiff drink.

“It’s official,” you say aloud to yourself as you unscrew a bottle of Magnum Grey Goose vodka and take a sip, “I have lost my mind,”

You kick off your Louboutin stilettos and pad over to get a glass and some ice before grabbing the vodka and heading upstairs to your bedroom. When you get there you strip off your dress and lie in the middle of your four-poster bed in just your slip. You wait until you’ve finished the first glass of vodka before you start to think about what happened tonight.

“Oh, god, okay,” you breathe, pouring another glass. _Let’s think about this rationally_.

You were thinking about Sam because of the whole St. Dismas cross thing, and there happened to be a waiter there that looked a bit like him. Okay, that looked _exactly_ how he would have looked fifteen years older… But hadn’t you just been thinking to yourself that you couldn’t remember his face clearly? And what about Sullivan, huh? Why was he acting so strange? Who stole the cross?

“No, no, no, I cannot go down this road again,” you groan.

It’s taken you years to get over Sam Drake. If you can even say you’re truly over him at all. He was your first real love and, at the grand old age of thirty-six, you’re sure now that he was the love of your life. No one else has ever been able to fill his shoes, not any of the rich bachelors whose arms you sometimes like to hang off at parties, and certainly not Rafe Adler. Over the years you’ve also found that nothing material is able to fill the void that Sam left behind in your life either. Through various means (legal and slightly less so) you have amassed a sizeable fortune of your own, far too much for one person to spend in a lifetime. You're doing your best to try, though – you've travelled all over, and in fact have homes in eight different countries. You've made it your personal mission to fill each house you own with the most beautiful pieces of antique furniture you can find, and each closet is full to bursting with the latest haute couture clothing. You will buy anything and everything if it gives you even a brief moment of awe, but tonight lying in your lavish Italian bedroom, you see everything for what it is; nothing but collections of nothing.  
Clumsily you pour yourself another glass of vodka, doing your best to ignore the tears spilling down your cheeks. In your drunken wisdom you decide to allow yourself this one night to wallow in half-buried grief. In the morning you will pick yourself up and dust yourself off, maybe meet up with some girlfriends, or go to the market in Arezzo and buy yourself something nice. But for now, you're going to indulge yourself, just a little, and take a trip down memory lane.

***

Let’s go back seventeen years. You’re nineteen years old, and you’re lost in the Peruvian mountains. At the request of a client, you’ve stolen an ancient looking diary from an archaeological conference in some swanky hotel in Caracas, and according to the pages - and an annotated map folded neatly between them – there is something _quite_ interesting to be discovered in a little lost city called Vilcabamba. This is going to be the first time that you’ll lift an artefact directly from its final resting place, rather than from a museum or a collector’s home, and you’re really excited for the find. The problem is, though, that you think you might be a tiny bit in over your head. You’ve been hiking through the mountains for hours and hours, having left your guide behind when he would take you no further.

“Scared of a little rain. Pussy,” you mutter to yourself, cursing him out.

You’re sure you’re going in the right direction, you just need to keep going. _Don’t give up_. The grey clouds overhead are threatening to open up, so you begin to move a little faster hoping to beat the rain. Thunder rumbles ominously and you pull up the hood of your coat in preparation. Now, about finding that lost city…

“Oh crap,” you say, disbelieving.

An almighty deluge begins, soaking you in an instant. You’re cold and you begin to shiver, but you’re not ready to admit that your guide was right. Not yet. You push on, but the rocks have become too slippery to climb and your fingers are too numb to hold on properly. You spy a muddy slope you think you can slide down, you will just need to make sure to jump at the end onto the next ledge and you can take shelter there under an overhanging ridge. Easy.

“Here goes nothing,” you say, and begin sliding on your ass.

The slope goes pretty much as expected, unpleasant but kind of fun, and you time your jump right onto the next level with no problems. It’s the next part where things get a little hairy. The rock you’re standing on crumbles under your weight and you can’t save yourself fast enough with your slippery fingers and you’re falling down and down and down and now you’re sliding again, getting slathered in mud and grazed on rubble. You scream and the mountains echo it back to you, swallowing the sound up in the rain and thunder. Finding your wits, you take your climbing axe and drive it into the ground beneath you, slowing your descent somewhat. After a little while the slope evens out and soon you’re just rolling in a puddle of mud, before coming to a stop as you gently collide with a stone wall. You stay there like that and catch your breath, before heaving yourself up to your feet.

“Phew, I am so graceful,” you pant, bending to pick up your axe from where it lay at your feet and feeling the twinge of pain in your back, “oh, god, I’m dying,” you moan.

You straighten up and take stock of your surroundings, and your mood picks back up immediately; you crashed into a stone wall, a _man-made_ stone wall! This has to be the place right? Unless you’ve hit Machu Picchu by mistake… Never mind all of that, you see a cave just ahead of you and limp over to it, intending to wait out the rainstorm there.  
Eventually the rain lets up, and the sun comes out again. You stand outside in the sunshine and feel it dry the mud in crusts to your clothes and hair. Spectacular. Putting that aside for the moment, you decide to follow the little wall you found earlier and see where it goes. For a while it seems that it goes precisely nowhere, but you trust your gut and keep going. You end up in a large clearing, surrounded by what could very possibly be the remnants of collapsed houses and huts. You grin and rush toward the most intact structure there, and begin looking for a way inside.

That’s when you hear movement behind you. You draw your gun only to turn around and find one pointed at your own head. Your heart thunders against your ribcage.

“Nathan!” The man holding the gun yells, and another man appears from behind one of the walls. He runs to the two of you and draws his own gun, aiming that right between your eyes as well.

Well, shit. You really need to start carrying more than one gun.

“Put it away,” the first man says to you, and you can see little reason not to obey.

You slide your pistol back into its holster at your hip and raise both of your hands, palms open. “Okay,” you say, “don’t shoot me, please,” you lock eyes with the first man, and give him your best lost puppy look.

“Alright, alright,” he says, putting away his gun. His partner follows suit. “Quit it with the eyes okay, you’re killing me here,”

You laugh in relief, “Oh thank god, I thought I was done for,”

The three of you share a chuckle before the first man extends his hand to you.

“Sam Drake,” he says, and you shake hands. “This here is my little brother Nathan,”

“Hey, less of the ‘little’,” Nathan says, shaking your hand too.

“I’m (Y/N) (L/N),” you say, acutely aware suddenly of your appearance.

As if also noticing, Sam speaks, “So, (Y/N), what the hell happened to you?” he looks you up and down and you return the gesture.

He’s cute, alright. Very cute. He looks ripped as all hell, too. You meet his eyes, which are the most gorgeous shade of hazel by the way, and you flush pink. Thankfully your face is so muddy you don’t think he will notice.

“I slipped,” you say at last, smiling sheepishly.

“I’ll say,” Sam laughs, “where from? The top of the mountain?”

“Well,” you trail off, and you can’t help but giggle at his expression.

“Are you hurt? Do you need anything?” Nathan says, looking concerned.

You shake your head, “I think I’m okay,” you say, “so guys, tell me, what the hell are you doing here?”

***

You get up from bed and stumble your way to the window, throwing it open and standing in the warm breeze.

“God, I was in love right from the first moment, wasn’t I?” you murmur into the night air, “But with you smiling at me like that I never stood a chance,”


	3. Chapter 3

You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand, forgetting your makeup, and frown at the black streak left on your skin. You walk across the room to your exquisitely carved oak vanity and take a seat at the mirror. After flicking the table lamp on, you wipe your face clean of all traces of makeup before taking a good long look at your reflection.  
You’ve invested almost as much money into your appearance as you have into decorating the other aspects of your life; hair dyed regularly to hide any greys that may appear, Botox in your forehead, and fillers in your lips to keep you looking youthful. It’s just another extension of you trying to find happiness in all of the wrong places.  
You open one of the vanity drawers to find your hairbrush, only for your fingers to brush against something else. You clutch it in your hand and bring it into the light to see it.  
It’s a necklace, of sorts. Really it’s just a hunk of turquoise with a hole bored into it and a loop of string threaded through. You hold it in both hands like something sacred and run your thumb over the smooth stone like you have a hundred times before. You sigh heavily, feeling the pang of your loneliness like a tangible thing in your gut.  
Against your better judgement, you pull the necklace over your head for the first time since you took it off years ago. The turquoise lies against your heart like an almighty weight crushing your spirit. You appraise yourself in the mirror again, but you can’t decide how your reflection makes you feel.

***

As it turns out, Sam and Nathan Drake are _also_ after a certain Inca treasure rumoured to be hiding in Vilcabamba. You _should_ be pissed about it, after all they’re kind of stealing your thunder here, but you’re too busy being completely smitten with Sam to care about it much. You just hope you’re not being too obvious about it.  
You’ve agreed to take a smaller cut of the treasure and work with the Drake brothers rather than against them. You considered your options carefully, and decided that a smaller cut and probable safety was a better option than no cut and almost certain death from exposure. Sure, your client will be livid, but hey, backstabbing and double-crossing is what this business is all about, right?  
The three of you are currently taking shelter from the rain in one of the slightly less derelict huts you’ve come across.

“Well, (Y/N),” Sam says as he lights a cigarette, “time to fork over anything you’ve got so far,”

You sigh a little but remember the fact that _both of them have guns_ and start rooting around in your backpack. You produce a protective plastic bag filled with copied pages from the diary, and a copied version of the map.

“According to the map, there should be the entrance to an underground shrine in the centre of the city, supposedly undiscovered by the Spanish” you say as the brothers look over the pages, “that’s where we’ll find the treasure,”

Nathan looks up at you, impressed, “So _you’re_ the one that lifted this from the conference in Venezuela!” he shakes his head, “it was already gone when we got there, I guess now we know why,”

“Sorry, I guess,” you say sheepishly.

“Do you know the story of Vilcabamba?” Sam says suddenly, looking up from the map and into your eyes.

“Um,” you say, mind going blank under his gaze, “it was the last stronghold of the Inca’s, right? Before the Spanish came and killed them all?”

“That’s the gist of it, yeah, but do you want to hear my theory?” he stubs out his cigarette under the sole of his boot. His voice has this captivating quality to it and you can do nothing else but nod along. “So, the story goes that Manco Inca, the prince, leads the rest of the royals through the forest to escape the Spaniards, right? And here he raises his city, Vilcabamba,” he’s waving his hands as he talks.

“Get to the point, Sam,” Nathan says, his face amused.

“Alright, alright, so listen to this: ‘he built his housings and lodgings in order to settle down there, for it seemed to him like a good site for his capital seat’,” Sam looks at you expectantly.

You let the thoughts roll around in your head for a moment before speaking, “So… what made him choose this place?” you say slowly, “What made it a ‘good site for his capital seat’?”

“Exactly!” He says triumphantly, “See, Nathan, she gets it,”

Nathan shakes his head at the pair of you, “It’s most likely geographical,” he says, “or this just happens to be where they got tired, I don’t know,”

“I’m telling you we are on the verge of something amazing, you guys,” Sam grins, practically ignoring his brother, “now, the rain’s letting up, shall we go find ourselves some treasure or what?”

 

 ---

 

“You can do it, just jump,” Sam says earnestly.

“Yeah, come on in, the water’s fine!” Nathan shouts up at you from way, way, way down.

“I’m going to die here, aren’t I?” You say to nobody in particular, staring down the cliff into the water below.

“(Y/N), listen to me, you’re gonna be _fine_. Here,” Sam holds his hand out to you, “take my hand, we’ll jump together, alright?” he has the most gentle expression on his face and of course you’re not going to disappoint him.

“Okay. Okay!” You say, clutching his hand in yours and taking a moment to appreciate its warmth before facing the cliff again.

“On three, okay?” he says, “One,”

“Two,” you grit your teeth.

“Three!” You shout together, leaping from the cliff face and falling down, down, down.

At the last second you remember to clamp your feet together as you hit the water. As the water roars around you, you manage to drag yourself to the surface, where you gulp in air as if you haven’t breathed in years.

“So how was that, was that good for you too?” Sam says, grinning as you both tread water.

You splash at him half-heartedly, “I can’t believe I just did that,” you croak.

“Well I’m real proud of you, we’ll make an adventurer out of you yet,” he smirks, dropping you a wink before turning and swimming towards where Nathan was waiting for you.

“Hey guys, if you two are done flirting you might wanna see this!” he calls to you from a rocky outcropping.

“We weren’t-!” You shout back, embarrassed. You start swimming behind Sam.

“I dunno, (Y/N),” Sam says as he helps you out of the water, “now you’ve washed the mountain off of you, you’re not so bad to look at,"

You flush scarlet, but before you can think of something to say, Nathan saves you.

“ _Guys_ , come on. I think I’ve found the treasure chamber, Sam, help me with the door,”

You follow the two of them along the slimy tunnel, which culminates in an ornately carved stone door.

“Wow,” you can’t help but say, “it’s beautiful,”

“Yeah, well let’s hope there’s something even more beautiful behind it,” Sam says, grunting as he and Nathan tug on the door.

You get between them and help pull, and slowly but surely you manage to move the door. The three of you scramble to be the first one through, and you manage to wind your way past them and into the inner chamber.  
The room is vast, and incredibly overgrown. Most of the ceiling has given way over the centuries, and there are trees growing right up through the stone floor. Aside from the flora and rubble, the room is almost completely empty. There’s just one thing left.

“Huh,” you murmur as the brothers follow you into the room.

“What the-?” Sam says, moving towards the pedestal in the centre of the room where a great big chunk of turquoise sits.

“Is this it?” Nathan says, carefully traversing the room.

“No, no, no, there’s got to be something else left,” Sam says, picking up the blue rock and examining it.

“Maybe the Spaniards found this place after all,” you say tentatively, “picked it clean,”

“Not entirely clean!” Nathan shouts from a dark corner of the room.

You and Sam follow his voice immediately, jumping over several cracks in the floor. When you find him he is sitting beside a lone chest, filled to the brim with-

“Gold!” Sam says, laughing in triumph, “Yes! Come to papa!” he kneels down and begins to go through the chest as well.

While you’re pleased the job has been successful, you find yourself a little sad knowing that it’s over. It’s been fun working with Sam and Nathan, and you’re going to miss them. Sam especially.

As if sensing that he was on your mind, Sam speaks, “Hold out your hand,” he says, smiling.

You do so and he presses something small and hard into your palm, it is a bead of turquoise, with a little hole through it.

“To remember this by,” he says, before going back to looting the chest.

“Oh, I don’t think I’m going to forget this in a hurry,” you say, running your thumb over the gift. "Wait, wait," you raise your hand, remembering something, "what about your theory about this place being special to the prince of the Inca's?"

Sam looks up at you and shrugs, "Hey, I can't be right all the time, can I?"

***

You finish brushing your hair and turn the lamp off. Alone in the dark again, you crawl into bed but you find no comfort in the Egyptian cotton sheets.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

“What about him, (Y/N)?”

You look up from your drink at the man your friend is nodding her head towards. He’s not bad - handsome, even - but there’s something in the line of his nose, the curve of his lips, that is too familiar. You’re after something completely different tonight.

“Not my type,” you say, popping your cocktail olive into your mouth, “I prefer blonds,”

You’re out with your good friend Sofia at a popular bar in Milan, doing your best to pretend that last night didn’t happen. This morning you awoke with a hangover, but also with determination. You are going to get Samuel Drake out of your mind. For good this time.

“Ooh, then what about _him?_ Sitting at the bar,” Sofia points to an attractive blond man who’s surprisingly sitting alone.

You almost want to back out, but you really don’t think you can face another night cold from loneliness in an empty bed. You see your opportunity when the seat next to the guy becomes empty. You down the rest of your drink for courage and throw Sofia a convincing wink.

“Don’t wait up,” you say, getting up from your seat and sauntering over to the bar. You decide to open with a classic, “Is this seat taken?”

He looks up at you with a surprised smile, “No, please, go ahead,” he speaks with a British accent. Fancy.

You hop up onto the barstool and swing your legs around, flashing some thigh through the slit in your little black dress.

“What’s your poison?” He says as he signals for the bartender.

“Scotch on the rocks with a twist,” you reply, smiling easily.

He nods in approval before ordering drinks for the two of you. “I’m Luke,” he extends his hand to you and you take it in your own, running your thumb across his knuckles slowly.

“(Y/N),” you smile warmly as you withdraw your hand.

\---

“Oh my god, this place is _amazing_ ,” Luke says as you both enter your foyer.

“Wait ‘til you see the bedroom,” you say, letting him pull you close and you press your breasts into his chest as you raise up to kiss him slowly.

“Well,” he runs his hands down your back and squeezes your ass in both hands, “lead the way,”

As the two of you roll around on your luxury mattress, you find your mind wandering against your will. The lips that kiss up and down your neck no longer belong to the handsome stranger you met in a bar, but to _someone else_.

 _No, no, not going to think about him_.

You roll on top of Luke, trying to take some control back in this tryst, and pull your dress up and off over your head. He reaches up and fondles your breasts through your bra with hands that you could so easily imagine belonged to someone else.

“You’re so hot,” Luke pants from below you, “you’re so hot, I can’t believe-“

You roll your eyes, “Just shut up and fuck me,”

***

“Are you even old enough to drink?” Nathan says, eyeing you up as the two of you wait in the motel room.

“Are you?” You retort. You’re pretty sure you’re actually older than him by a little bit.

A man named Victor Sullivan had picked you and the Drake brothers from Vilcabamba in a little prop plane. You stopped off at a seedy looking motel in- you’re not _actually_ sure what town you’re in, you assume you’re still in Peru, but really, who knows?  
Apparently Sullivan is acting as go-between, shipping the treasure off to the client and returning with the cash. Sam has gone with him, as backup you suppose. They said that they would be back soon with the closest thing they can find to champagne, so in the meantime you’re just kicking back for a while with Nathan.

“Do you want to take a shower?” he says.

You stop picking dried dirt from your shirt, “Yes, yes I do,”

“It’s just through there, I think there’s clean towels,” he points to the door.

It feels really good to finally be able to properly wash the dirt and grime from your hair and skin, even better to slip into some clean clothes. Thankfully you remembered to pack a spare outfit. You towel your hair dry and run your fingers through it before going back into the main room.

Just then the motel door swings open and Sam comes barrelling into the room, a cigarette hanging from his lips and a bottle of something fizzy in his hand. Sullivan comes up behind him holding a very important looking briefcase.

“Guess who’s got the money, baby!” Sam says, whooping and wrapping an arm around Nathan’s shoulder’s and yours too.

“Actually, that would be me,” Sullivan says with a smile, closing the door behind him and laying the briefcase on one of the beds.

“Let’s see it, come on!” Nathan cries.

Sullivan obliges and flicks open the clasps on the briefcase. Inside is more money than you’ve ever seen in one place. Man, people will pay a _lot_ for Incan gold. The three of you cheer and Sullivan begins to divide the money up into your shares. Nathan goes off to find clean glasses whilst Sam gets to work on popping the cork on the bottle of sparkling wine.

You can’t help but get swept up in the excitement. You’re all safe, you’ve been paid, and Sam’s looking at you with this glint in his eyes. You’re a little sad that he doesn’t have his arm around you anymore, but it doesn’t matter because Nathan is handing you a coffee mug and Sam is pouring you some not-champagne and then he’s leaning in close and he’s _kissing_ you. Your eyes close automatically and you press your lips against his in return as if on instinct. You’re just starting to really get a feel for him but it’s chaste as hell and much too soon it’s over. You look into his eyes and see the promise there. _Later_.

“Good job out there today,” he says, before pouring everyone else a glass.

Your cheeks are positively burning, not from embarrassment this time but from desire. You sip the wine and find it’s actually quite pleasant. Sweet, but not overly so.  
Sullivan is shaking his head fondly at you all as you celebrate, clinking your mismatched drinking ware and flicking through your money like you’re all millionaires.

\---

A few hours later and you have retired to your own room. The walls are an awful off-yellow, and the carpet is a hideous burnt orange. The little table and chairs set have certainly seen better days, and those days were a _really_ long time ago. The bedspread miraculously matches the curtains; green and yellow concentric circles, and the mattress creaks if you so much as breathe heavily while laying on it.  
Precisely _none_ of that matters right now though, because there’s a knock on your door. You open it and of course it’s Sam. He looks simply delicious, he’s showered and changed and he smells clean and new. You pull him into the room by his shirt so you can bury your face into his neck and drink him in.

“You smell divine,” you say breathily, pushing the door closed behind him.

“That’s a new one,” he says, chuckling, before lowering his head to catch your lips with his.

This kiss is as alike to the one earlier as water is to fire. His hands clutch around your waist while you keep one of yours fisted in his shirt, the other coming up to his hair. He hums low in his throat and kisses you deeper. Your mouths move in perfect sync, both of you pressing in as close as you can possibly get. You lower your hands to his belt and you start to fumble with the buckle, eventually getting it open and pulling the belt off through the loops making it hiss like a leather snake.  
You unbutton his jeans and slide your hand inside, running your hand along the length of his cock through his underwear. He’s already hard. You keep stroking him this way as his hands come up your back, under your shirt, to unhook your bra. He slides his hands around to your chest, caressing your ribs as he goes, and cups your breasts in his hands, squeezing gently. He groans into your mouth.

“Get on the bed,” he says, his voice like dark chocolate when the two of you break apart.

You laugh breathlessly and turn towards the bed, stripping your shirt off as you go and discarding your bra. You lie back on the bed and undo your jeans, lifting your hips so that he can drag them off you. Your heart is hammering like the wings of a hummingbird and you can feel the flames of desire licking their way up inside your belly.  
Sam is pulling his shirt up over his head and oh god he’s so gorgeous. You sit up and reach out for him, wanting to run your hands over his abs, his pecs, his _biceps_. You bite your lip when he drops his jeans and pulls his cock out of his boxers. It’s thick and heavy, his blood pumping through his veins in a frenzy. When you wrap your hand around it it’s hot, it’s almost burning your hand. You begin jerking him off, running your fingers over the head on each upstroke.

“Fuck, babe. That’s good,” he growls, looking down at you with fire in his eyes.

The pet name goes straight to your core and you feel another surge of want deep inside you. Your lust gives you courage and you dip your head forwards to plant a little kiss on the tip of his cock. Your tongue comes out and you lap at his slit like a kitten, feather light, before opening your mouth and taking him in, closing your lips around him and sucking hard. He tastes like gun smoke and bad decisions, and you love it.

“You’re a little firecracker, aren’t you?” he breathes, “Not how I pictured, not at all,”

You slide your mouth off with a _pop_ and look up at him, jerking him off again.

“You pictured this?” you say, genuinely curious.

“From the moment I saw you I knew I was going to bend you over and fuck you senseless,” he says, grinning.

You’re not sure how to take that, but you forget all about it as he steps out of his boxers and pushes you down onto the bed. You lift your hips for him again as he pulls your panties down and you spread your legs. He slides a finger over you and down to the entrance of your cunt. You’re so wet that he can slide it straight inside with ease.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” he says as he starts moving the finger in and out, starting slow before building speed and adding another, “you being this wet for me, it’s amazing, baby,”

You moan, trying to spread your legs wider as if that will make him go deeper. He’s got the motion just right; slow, deep strokes, a regular rhythm for you to roll your hips to. Just when you think it can’t get much better than this, he starts using his thumb to rub circles over your clit. You shudder and moan again, bringing your hands up to your face and pressing your palms over your eyes. Suddenly everything is very intense.

“C’mon baby, the sooner you come, the sooner I can fuck you,” he murmurs into your ear, before lowering his head and wrapping his lips around one of your nipples. He sucks it and releases it, lapping it with his tongue in time with the movement of his hand. You’re going to come like this.

“Don’t stop,” you whisper, feeling your core tighten around his fingers.

You’re dancing on a knife’s edge, and you don’t know all of the steps but you’re spinning around and around until you lose your balance and you’re falling, faster and faster and-  
You moan much louder than you mean to and you come, quivering over and over around his fingers. You lie back and sigh happily. Sam moans and you open your eyes just in time to see him sucking his fingers clean. Impossibly, you feel the coil begin to tighten inside of you again.

“You’re like the fucking juiciest peach ever,” he breathes, “now turn over and put that ass in the air,”

You can’t get on your knees fast enough. The bed creaks dramatically as he gets on behind you.

“Are you ready, sweetheart?” he says, his voice low and gravelly.

You just melt that, “ _Yes!_ ” you breathe.

He slides his cock between your ass cheeks a couple of times, teasing you. You’re about to threaten to kill him when he finds your cunt and slides all the way inside. It’s a stretch, but it’s a _good_ stretch, like doing Pilates after a hard workout, and god does it make you sweat.

“Holy shit, you’re tight,” he grunts and you smile into the pillow.

He grabs your hips with both hands and starts fucking you in earnest. You raise yourself up onto your hands and do your best to push back against him in time with his thrusts. The feeling is incredible, it’s like all of your fantasies coming true at once.  
His hands reach around and cup your breasts, his thumbs rubbing over your nipples and suddenly you’re too weak to hold the both of you up and you drop back down onto your elbows. He curses behind you and pulls your ass up towards him again and all you can do is moan and writhe and hold on for the ride. Then he places his hand on the small of your back and pushes you down until you’re flat on the mattress. From this angle everything is suddenly much tighter and more intense and-

“I’m going to come,” you groan, without really meaning to.

“I can tell,” he says, “your pussy just got so much tighter,”

It’s dirty and it’s devoid of all ceremony but you love it and it’s getting you off. You let out one last high-pitched whine before the coil within you is loosened and you’re like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

“Fuck, fuck, (Y/N),” Sam says urgently, “Where do I-? Can I-?”

“Inside,” you say at once, “come inside me,”

With an almighty groan he pushes as deep as he can get inside you and stills there. Still spasming from your own orgasm, your pussy milks his cock of all of his come.  
You lie still on your belly in the afterglow, breathing heavier than you ever have in your life. Sam slips out of you and collapses on the bed beside you.

“Fuck me,” he breathes, “you’re a wildcat,”

You can do little but moan in agreement.

He reaches onto the floor for his jeans and finds his cigarettes and lighter. After taking a few puffs he seems to come around a little more. “Hey, that- was that uh, safe?” he says as casually as he can.

You heave yourself up to smile at him, “Don’t worry,” you say, “I’m a responsible adult and I take my birth control pill every day,”

“Okay, good,” he sighs, then holds his arm out for you, “c’mere you,”

You snuggle up under his arm and a question bubbles up to the surface, “So, how was that for you?”

He smirks down at you, “Darlin’ we are doing _that_ again,”

***

“You can go now,” you say to Luke, getting up from bed and wrapping your naked form in a robe.

“Uh, right now?” he says, not moving, “I’m a bit tired after that actually, maybe-“

“I’d really prefer it if you left,” you say, not giving him an inch.

Slowly he gets up and throws his clothes back on. “I’ll see myself out,” he says curtly.

“That’s great, thanks,” you say, not even watching him leave. You go over to your dresser and open a carton of cigarettes. You haven’t smoked for a long time but you really need one tonight. You light up and take a drag, trying to smoke out the feelings of nausea and guilt that well up inside you like muck and tar. You really have a problem, but how to solve it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's day!


	5. Chapter 5

Drinking yourself numb didn’t help. Sex with a stranger didn’t help. And hell, you’ve been trying for the past fifteen years to put him out of your mind and that hasn’t worked at all. So, what comes next? Humouring yourself?  
It’s early morning. You’re sitting at the marble-topped breakfast bar in your immaculate kitchen with a cup of Chinese flowering tea and a cigarette. You shut your eyes and try to picture that night.  
It all happened so fast, but you saw him. Even if it was just for a moment, his face is burned into the back of your eyelids like the image on the shroud of Turin.  
You blow out a plume of smoke and take a calming sip of tea before even allowing yourself to think what you’re about to think.

_What if Sam’s alive?_

You chuckle to yourself at the absurdity of it all. If Sam’s alive then where has he been all these years? Still in prison, trapped and forgotten? The thought makes you feel hollow inside.  
You think back to the auction again, about what happened when the cross disappeared. ‘Sam’ disappeared too, but that was likely because he had never been there to begin with. If you were remembering correctly though, there was someone else who mysteriously vanished at that same moment.

“Victor Sullivan,” you mutter to yourself. You think about it. The man has his fingers in so many pies, if he didn’t have the cross stolen for himself then he might know who did. It helped that you were on friendly terms, it wasn’t _too_ out of the question that you might call him just to see how he was since you bumped into each other. You scroll through the plethora of contacts on your phone until you find him. Your thumb hovers over the Call button for an inordinate amount of time before you work up the nerve to hit it. While it rings you light yourself another cigarette and refill your cup from your glass teapot.  
The phone continues to ring before going to voicemail. You sigh and decide to try one more time. Again, the metallic voice tells you to leave your message after the beep.

“Hey, Victor, it’s (Y/N),” you begin, unsure of how you’ll end, “it was so good to see you at the auction, you know, before Rafe ruined everything,” you take a drag on your cigarette, “anyway, it would be nice to catch up with you at some point. Call me,” you hang up and place the phone down beside your teacup. You drum your perfectly-manicured fingernails on the countertop. Well, what now? You’re not going to bother Nathan, he’s finally settled down and married, you don’t want to drag up the past again.

 _There’s always someone else you could call_.

The thought comes to you completely unbidden and you frown. No, you absolutely will not call Rafe Adler. That would be really stupid. You’re not that stupid, you’re not-

You hit call before you can stop yourself.

“(Y/N)?” Ooh, you were kind of hoping that he wouldn’t answer. He doesn’t sound too surprised to hear from you, either. “What can I do for you?”

“Hi, Rafe,” you say, stalling, “how are you?”

You hear him say ‘give me a minute’ to someone sharply before he answers, “I’m very well, are we going to talk about the weather now?”

You chuckle in spite of yourself. You remember how to talk to Rafe. “Actually, you’re supposed to ask me how I am, _then_ we move onto the weather,”

He huffs out a laugh, “Cut to the chase, (Y/N). I’m a very busy man as I’m sure you know,”

“Okay, I wanted to ask you about the other night, the auction at the Rossi Estate,”

“Go on,” he drawls.

“Do you know what happened? Who stole the cross, I mean,”

“Who have you been talking to?” he snaps, suddenly spitting sparks.

“No one!” you say quickly, trying to quell the flames, “Honestly, I was just curious. I heard the gunshots, I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” you cringe to yourself, hoping he doesn’t see straight through the lie.

There’s a pause and you hold your breath.

“Well, I’m touched by your concern,” he says at last, “but what I know is my business,”

You let yourself breathe again.

“You don’t think Sullivan-?”

“(Y/N)!” he’s red hot again, “Just drop it, you shouldn’t go getting mixed up in this again, it’s not good for you,”

You frown, taken aback slightly.

“Look,” he says, softer now, “I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt. You know how this game is, nothing’s ever as simple as you think it’s going to be,”

You clear your throat, unsure if he’s offering comfort or a threat. Both are equally likely. You shouldn’t have called.

“You’re right,” you say, your voice like china about to shatter, “someone always ends up getting hurt,”

***

“When will I see you again?” you say, your tender heart starting to bleed.

Sam looks at you uneasily, “I don’t know, doll. You know how it is; here today, on the other side of the globe tomorrow. I can’t make any promises,”

You’re at Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport, about to get a flight home. Sam and Nate (‘seriously, the only one who calls me Nathan is my brother,’) are jetting off with Sullivan to their next adventure, and you’re not invited. Not that any of them have actually said anything, but you can feel yourself overstaying your welcome in the boy’s club.

“Do you _want_ to see me again?” You try a different tact.

He rubs the back of his neck and avoids your eyes, “Hey, it’s been real fun uh- getting to know you, (Y/N),” he says at length, “but we’re both young and we have the whole world to experience. Why do we have to put labels on things? Why can’t we just say, ‘this was fun, let’s do it again sometime’? Sorry to hurt your feelings but I’m just not looking for a girlfriend right now,”

 _Oh_.

Your cheeks are burning with shame and your eyes sting suddenly. You suck it up and force out a laugh. “Hurt my feelings?” you say, affecting incredulity, “Don’t be stupid! I- I feel exactly the same way, I meant we should hook up again sometime, i-if we bump into each other again, I mean…” you trail off, feeling very vulnerable.

A grin breaks out on his stupid handsome face but it doesn’t lift your spirits in the slightest. “Well, yeah, that’d be great. Be seeing ya, (Y/N). Have a safe flight,” he turns and walks out of the airport and out of your life.

You watch him go, feeling very much the naïve nineteen-year-old girl that you are. _I am so stupid. How foolish can one person be? I can’t believe how I threw myself at him. No wonder he doesn’t think I’m girlfriend material_.

You tug your luggage through the terminal, quietly hoping that your plane crashes.

***

You’re startled out of your reverie by your phone ringing suddenly. Victor Sullivan’s name is flashing on the screen. You don’t know if you actually expected him to return your call. You answer quickly.

“Hi,” you start, and realise you have no idea what you want to say.

“(Y/N),” Victor says. He sounds strange somehow.

“What’s up?”

“There’s something I really should tell you, (Y/N),”

“What is it?” You really hope you sound a lot calmer than you feel right now.

Too much time passes before he speaks again.

“Y’know what? Forget I said anything. I was thinking of someone else, senile moment, you know,”

“Victor? Wait-“

The line is as dead as your sense of reason.


	6. Chapter 6

You wave goodbye to Italy as your plane takes off. You take a sip of prosecco and lie back in your first class seat. Yesterday morning, after Victor hung up on you, you realised with startling clarity that you have let yourself fall into the Dark Place again.

After Sam died you were in the Dark Place for a _very_ long time. You haunted the halls of the St. Dismas cathedral like a mournful ghost, the cold Scottish wind passing through you like you weren’t there at all. Sometimes you used to stand on the edge of one of the cliffs, staring into the sea below and just _wondering_ what it what it would be like to scatter yourself among the rocks there. You wouldn’t do that to Nate, though. He was just as lost as you were, and you didn’t want to think of how hurt he would be to lose you too.  
Rafe was another story. He was going out of his mind, desperate to find Henry Avery’s treasure. Without Sam to guide him he was like a ship lost from its mooring. Some days he would be patient and comforting, and others he would fly into rages, furious with you and Nate for not being more helpful. ‘Sam would have wanted you to be the ones to find the treasure,’ he would say. ‘Do you want his death to mean nothing?’ was another one of his favourites.  
It wasn’t so much that Sam’s death was meaningless, it was just that _everything else was_. For you, at least. You couldn’t give two shits about finding the treasure anymore if Sam wasn’t there to enjoy it with you.  
Leaving Scotland behind helped some, starting over and throwing yourself into work helped more. But after every adventure you would go back to your empty house that was only beaten by the emptiness in your heart. So you tried filling your homes with pretty things and perfecting your reflection and that kept you busy for a few more years. Now though, it seems as if the slightest thing is enough to send you reeling backwards and something just _has_ to give. You can’t keep going around and around in the same circles.

This is how you find yourself flying to Scotland, a certain lump of turquoise hidden in your pocket. You’re going to confront and bury your demons in one fell swoop, and you can think of no better place than a graveyard.

***

It’s a year since Vilcabamba, and so much has changed. You’re no longer that unsophisticated, dewy-eyed girl from before; you’re a woman of the world now, and you feel almost untouchable. Instead of the lone gun hanging from your hip, still virgin in its holster, you carry two, and they’ve seen almost as much action as you have. You’ve grown out of your general clumsiness and into your figure, the general running-jumping-climbing of the job has made you strong and lithe. You’ve managed to claw your reputation back over the last year, too. It didn’t help your career much to be known as a turncoat, but you’ve completed enough heists successfully now that your dance card is forever full.

Tonight you’re in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and you’re here to steal something big. You creep along corridors and around security measures, as silent and dangerous as a black panther. You check your watch, you have eleven minutes to get to the basement lab where they care for the artefacts. In eleven minutes your contact will disable the security alarms for fifty-five seconds. You have plenty of time.

You round a corner and almost run straight into the back of one of the guards. You launch yourself up onto his back and wrap your arms around his throat. You use your bicep and the blade of your wrist to choke him, cutting off the blood to his brain and he’s out in seconds. You don’t have time to hold him until he dies, so you leave him there on the floor and run past him to the grate in the wall that covers the vent. As per your contact’s instructions, it has already been loosened and you heave it open as quietly as you can and slide inside. It’s a lot tighter in here than you expected and you wiggle along like a worm, conscious of your time ticking away.

Finally you come out on the other side, and you dust yourself off and head down the stairs. As you approach your destination, you hear a commotion ahead of you. You peep cautiously around the corner. The two men who were guarding the sturdy metal door to the lab were now on the floor, beaten to varying degrees. The perpetrators are two men dressed all in black, like yourself. Two thieves. Even with their backs turned, you recognise them immediately.

You draw both of your silenced pistols and clear your throat quietly.

Samuel and Nathan Drake turn around in unison, raising their hands when they see your guns. When they realise it’s you they both sport identical confused expressions.

“We really need to stop bumping into each other like this,” you say, keeping your voice low.

“Hey, (Y/N),” Nate says, offering you a smile and a wave.

“(Y/N), baby, what-?” Sam begins, charming grin already plastered to his face.

“I’m not your baby,” you say sharply and revel in the slight look of discontent that passes across his features. You decide to put them out of their misery. “I am, however, joking,” you raise your guns to show you mean no harm before holstering them.

Both of them sigh with relief before lowering their hands.

“You really had me going there,” Sam says, “it’s uh, good to see you, (Y/N),”

You shake your head, “There isn’t time for pleasantries, I’m afraid. In two minutes the alarm will be deactivated and we can open the door. Did you pick up a key card from one of those guys?” you motion to the unconscious (or dead) guards on the floor.

“Got it right here,” Nathan says, showing you.

“Okay, great. So I’ll get what I came for and you guys get yours, then we all get out in fifty seconds,” you're being dangerously optimistic and you know it.

Sam catches your eye, “What if we came for the same thing?”

You pat your hip, “Then you give it to me or I shoot you,”

Infuriatingly, both of them snicker.

“Okay fine,” you secede, “but you really should give it to me since you’re hijacking my gig and everything,”

“Don’t worry, doll. We can argue all you want once we’re outta here,”

Your watch begins counting down from ten so you don’t argue the point. At the count of zero, Nate swipes the key card and enters the password that you give him on the little number pad that appears. The three of you pull the door open together in a highly familiar way and then the race is on.  
You search the stacks of crates and protective boxes for something labelled 220-b. You pay the brothers no mind as they also search through the shelves. You find a narrow oblong shaped box with the right label and you wrap it in the bubble wrap you brought and tuck it away into your backpack.

“Okay, I’ve got mine,” you say, “what are you guys looking for?”

They turn to you, “220-b,” Nate says, “have you seen it?”

Your heart sinks. _Of course, nothing’s ever simple_. You’re going to leave them there to their fate, you really are, but for some reason what comes out of your mouth is “I’ve got it here, let’s go!”

The three of you exit the lab and lock the door behind you with four seconds to spare. You lead the way back to the vent, before realising that there’s no way either of them will be able to fit.

“To the window!” Sam hisses, and you follow him as he sprints to a window that’s hanging open. He vaults the sill and begins scaling the outer wall, Nate following after him. Again, you consider leaving and going your own way, but something makes you follow them, _wherever_ it may lead you.

\---

“We’ll give you a cut of our money,” Sam says tiredly, the three of you sit around the table in Sam’s hotel room, trying to decide what to do.

“No,” you say, “I am not forfeiting another job because of you two. You boys are so bad for business,”

“Guys,” Nate pipes up, “it’s really late and I’m beat, can we at least open the damn thing and get a look at it?”

“All right,” you reach for the box sitting innocently in the centre of the table. Carefully, carefully, you pry it open and you sigh in awe, “it’s so _beautiful_ ,”.

It’s the necklace that the pharaoh Tutankhamun wore as he lay in his tomb for thousands of years. Three strings of flat beads made of gold, interspersed with ones made of glazed pottery. The clasps are in the shape of cobras.  
Sam and Nate get up from their chairs and come to stand behind you so they can see into the box too.

Sam puts his hands on your shoulders and squeezes. “Yep, that’s something all right,”

You’re so mesmerised. “Just imagine being the one to discover this,” you say with wonder, “you open up the sarcophagus and find King Tut looking up at you, his golden death mask covering his face and this around his neck. And knowing that you’re the first person to see this for _thousands_ of years,”

Nate sits back down but Sam stays behind you. He leans down, wrapping his arms around you and pressing a kiss to your cheek. “I’m real happy for you,” he murmurs into your ear, “but you’re not getting it,”

You huff and push his arms away, swallowing the feelings that you thought were quashed last year. “Fine," you say through gritted teeth, "I’m sure we can figure something out,”

Nate stands up and stretches, groaning as he does so. “Well,” he yawns, “you two’ll have to decide it between yourselves 'cause I’m going to bed,” he heads to the door, “Sam, I can trust you to get us a good deal, can’t I?” he doesn’t wait for an answer before leaving the room.

“Well, (Y/N),” Sam says, and you can _hear_ the smirk in his voice, “alone again,”

***

You look out over Europe. You really hope that when you land you’ll be able to put your memories to rest.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

You look out the window of your quaint little room in the Scottish B&B, sighing at the peaceful beauty of the rolling hills. You don’t know exactly how you expected to feel upon landing here, but it certainly wasn’t this quiet calm that has settled over you like the morning mist.  
You change out of the leggings and oversized hooded sweatshirt that you wore for the flight, and into jeans and a turtleneck. You lace up your hiking boots and slip into your coyote-fur lined winter coat, pocketing the turquoise pendant like it’s a good luck charm you can’t go anywhere without.  
You grab your phone and keys and exit the room, locking it behind you. You go down the stairs and towards the front door.

“I’m heading out now,” you say to the owner, a stout middle-aged woman with greying hair.

“Be careful out there, dear,” she says in her thick Scottish accent, “the weather’s only going to get worse,”

You smile gently, “I’ll be fine,” you say, then head out the door into the brisk morning air.

You hop into the Range Rover you rented and start the engine. You’ve got a pretty long drive ahead of you, so you hook your phone up to the sound system and select your favourite playlist for driving. You buckle your seatbelt and adjust the rear view mirror.

“Coming at ya, Saint Dismas,” you say, pulling out of the driveway and onto the road.

 ***

 You stand up from the table in the hotel room and turn around slowly, facing Sam. “Don’t. Start.” You say, glaring at him.

He bites his lip at you, “Mm, girl, what’re you trying to do to me, looking at me like that?” he takes a step towards you.

You take a step back, groaning in frustration. “Sam, stop it, we need to sort this problem out,”

He runs his hand over his chest and down to his crotch. “I’ve got a problem you can solve,” he chuckles.

“I can’t believe I was ever attracted to you,” you say, crossing your arms over your chest. Of course, it’s a lie. He’s still as gorgeous to you as ever. His lips still look like they could drive you wild, and his arms still look big and strong enough to throw you around, or to hold you close to his broad chest. His eyes burn holes into you like cigarettes and you can feel your resolve slipping away.

You don’t want to get hurt again, you don’t, but maybe this time will be different. You’re older now and a little bit wiser, maybe this time you can be the one to walk away and leave him wanting more. Even the playing field.

“(Y/N),” Sam’s suddenly much closer to you than he was a moment ago. He reaches out and brushes your hair behind your ear with calloused fingers. He cups your cheek in his hand and his eyes lower to gaze at your lips. “Just relax,” he breathes, “you can trust old Sammy to make you feel good,” the corner of his mouth raises in a smirk.

_Trust, that’s a laugh. There is no honour among thieves._

You push his hand from your face and he frowns. You press a quick kiss to his lips to ease his consternation and then you sink down to your knees. You unbutton his black pants and pull his cock out, rubbing and tugging until he’s fully hard.

“Woah there, (Y/N),” Sam pants, “god, I forgot how eager you are,”

You look up at him and quirk your eyebrow, “You’ll shut up now if you don’t want me to stop,”

“Ooh, feeling bossy tonight are we? I like that-“

“ _Sam,”_

“All right, all right, shutting up now,”

You can’t help but crack a smile, so to hide it you open your mouth and wrap your lips around his cock. You swipe your tongue around and over the head rhythmically, stopping every now and then to just really _suck._ You open up wider and take more of him in and then start moving your head, sucking hard on the backstroke and swirling your tongue when you go back in. Now his hands are in your hair, massaging your scalp and gently petting you. You bob your head and when Sam groans low in his throat you moan around him in response. You chance a look at him and what you see makes you quake with want. His eyes are closed in pleasure and his mouth is parted slightly. His brows are knit as if in concentration. God, you could just fall in love with that face.

You stop and pull your mouth away.

“Hey, I didn’t say anything-“

You giggle to yourself, “It’s okay, my jaw is just tired and my knees kind of hurt,”.

He helps you up to your feet and you push him towards the bed. He looks kind of funny in his full thief getup with his dick hanging out and you tell him to get naked. You strip off quickly as well, and follow him up onto the bed.

“You’re gorgeous,” Sam says softly, pulling you towards him for a kiss.

You keep the kiss short, putting aside the fluttery feelings that rise up in your chest, and push him onto his back. You straddle his hips and grab his hand, bringing it down to your sopping wet cunt.

“You always get so wet,” he says in awe, but you _can’t_ deal with _feelings_ right now and every time he speaks you hang off his every word, always about to fall deep in love.

“Use your fingers,” you say breathlessly, “you need to open me up for your big cock,”

Your words have the desired effect, Sam groans but says nothing and slides two fingers right inside, pumping them once, twice, before adding another finger and thrusting them in and out quickly.

“Okay, okay, I’m ready,”

He removes his hand, and you grab his wrist again, bringing his hand up to your mouth so you can lick his fingers clean.

“ _Fuck,_ (Y/N),”

You reach down for his cock and line it up with your core, before sinking down, both of you sighing in pure relief to finally be joined again after all this time.

You raise up and sink down again and _god,_ it feels just as good the second time. Sam’s hands come down to hold and squeeze your ass, and you start up a rhythm, rolling your hips, grinding your pussy on his cock as it ignites fire deep inside of you.

Your thighs are strong but they’re shaking from exertion, your every nerve electrified as you ride Sam like you’re trying to break the bed beneath the two of you. You’re sweating now, and moaning on each downward thrust, and Sam’s gripping your hips to help you move, his hips coming up to meet you and he’s panting roughly, and now he’s opened his eyes and he’s looking at you and oh god, you’re going to come.

You pitch forwards onto your hands, and as you ride out your orgasm you catch Sam’s lips in your own and kiss him deeply. He wraps his arms around you, running his hands up and down your back soothingly.

“Attagirl, (Y/N),” he murmurs into your ear, before pressing a kiss there.

You laugh warmly and start moving your hips again, “Your turn,” you say breathlessly.

He throws his head back, his eyes squeezed shut. He lets out the breathiest little moan and the noise is so hot it spurs you on to roll and ride and writhe on his cock until his hands are gripping you with white knuckles and he’s bucking up into you uncontrollably and _moaning_ again and- and-

“ _Oh, yeah,”_ he growls, emptying his come deep into your cunt.

The two of you lie there still for a few moments, coming down from your impossible height. When you come back to yourself you roll off of him, still breathing heavily.

“We cannot leave it a year before we do that again,” Sam says, yawning.

You hum in agreement, your eyes growing heavy.

 ***

 As you drive along the winding country roads that lead you ever closer to the cathedral, you feel yourself blush in the privacy of your car. _You’ve been gone for fifteen years and you still make me blush like a schoolgirl. How am I ever supposed to get over you?_


	8. Chapter 8

And there it is, looming from the hilltop, the ruins of the St. Dismas cathedral. It doesn’t quite cut the same silhouette into the skyline as you remember, but the structure is hundreds of years old, you’re surprised it hasn't collapsed sooner. The eerie calm that has accompanied you on your journey thus far is now replaced with a daunting uneasiness. You turn onto the dirt road that leads up the hill and begin ascending. It has been almost fifteen years since you last saw this place, and it’s terrifying how easily all of those awful memories come screaming back to you.  
  
_Trying with all of your might to see the site with Sam’s eyes, to find something that would make all of this worthwhile. Rafe taking his frustrations out on you, then later apologising with kisses and soft touches and god, how guilty that made you feel. But Sam was just bones and dust now, he couldn’t feel pain anymore, he couldn’t be_ _betrayed_.  
  
And _that_ is a whole other can of worms that you’ll open at another time. Maybe. You pull into the old makeshift parking lot and are surprised to find it empty. Where is everyone? You thought the place would be swarming with people, since Rafe has teamed up with Nadine Ross and Shoreline, so why does it seem to be deserted? Has the treasure been found? You feel like you would have heard about it if that was the case, so what? You step out of your car and into the icy wind. It smells of salt and lost memories and it fills your lungs like the black seawater crashing against the rocks below and both drowns you and purifies you at once. Your hair is whipped around your face in the breeze and you pull it into a ponytail quickly and then begin the short hike up the hill to where the trailers used to be.  
The place is a lot quieter than before, there’s no whirr of machines in the air, no clamour of workmen digging, no Rafe shouting when once again they turn up nothing. In fact, the area is pretty much a ghost town, and when you come across the trailers where Rafe and the workers would sometimes stay if they were on the site for days at a time, you find them locked shut and abandoned.

“Where is everyone?” you say to no one in particular as you rattle one of the trailer’s doors in frustration.

Rafe would _never_ abandon this place, you know this in your heart, so something has definitely happened here. You’re going to find out what.  
You follow the path made by hundreds of heavy boots tramping back and forth, and make your way to the nearest dig site on your way up to the cathedral proper. You see how Rafe has made adjustments in his excavation approach.

“Shoreline must really like dynamite,” you whistle, tiptoeing around the edges of several craters in the ancient ground. This might explain why the cathedral looks even more dilapidated than before.

The changes to the landscape make it a bit harder to reach your destination, but muscle memory helps you out immensely when you need to scale a wall or clamber over some rubble. You find it odd that during your traversal you don’t come upon any construction equipment or demolition vehicles. Aside from the gaping holes in the hillside, there’s nothing to suggest that Shoreline was ever here. It’s like the place has been purposefully emptied, like someone has hidden away evidence of some crime. Finally you crest the hill, and stand among the ruined towers and walls of the old cathedral. This is when you see the real damage. The entire place is collapsed, what was once undoubtedly an imposing place of worship is now reduced to a heap of broken fragments of masonry, hours upon hours of craftsmanship now lying deceased, its splintered remains rent across the hillside.  
There’s nothing for you here, save the risk of a broken neck, and so you make your way back down the hill, past the excavation sites, to where you remember there is an old graveyard sitting just a little ways away. Again, the trek there is a little more strenuous than you were anticipating, but you’re pleased to find that you’re still able to handle it, if not quite as smoothly as you would have a few years ago.  
Pearly flakes of snow are starting to fly in the wind and you duck into a little cave to catch your breath. You take a seat on a wooden crate that’s been left behind and reach for the turquoise pendant in your pocket. You bring it out and gaze at it, running your thumb over the surface. This is when you catch something out of the corner of your eye and you grow still.  
You can just make out a booted foot in the back of the cave, and when you shine your phone’s flashlight back there you see that it is attached to a man. Or rather, the corpse of what used to be a man. You’ve seen enough mercenaries in your life to recognise him as one, and when you go over to take a closer look you see he has been shot multiple times in the chest. It’s hard to tell because of the cold conditions, but you don’t think that he has been dead for that long.

“Looks like Rafe’s cleanup crew missed you,” you say down to the body, before turning away from him and beginning to pace the confines of the cave.

You start trying to put together what might have happened in this desolate place.

“So, whoever it is that stole the second Saint Dismas cross is led to this place just like we were,” you say, getting the ball rolling in your mind, “and then they run into the Shoreline mercs. That’s you,” you motion to the dead man on the floor so that he feels included. “There’s lots of shooting and explosions by the looks of it, then one side finds what they’re looking for and blows up the evidence? Does that sound plausible to you?”

No response.

“I trust that there was no treasure here then. Just another clue for the wild goose chase,” you look down on the dead merc sadly, “But for all the lives that this damn treasure has taken, I hope it's fucking worth it,”

***

_I hope it was worth it, Sam Drake, ‘cause you’ve just killed me._

You can’t believe you’ve let this happen again. You thought that maybe this time you had the upper hand, but you must have tired yourself out more than you thought because when you woke up King Tut’s necklace was gone. The bastard had taken it while you slept, rendered comatose after your _exertions_.  
What you haven’t told the Drake brothers, and you’re thinking now that maybe you should have mentioned it at least once, is that your client for this particular job is a highly influential and dangerous individual who, when he finds out, is going to make it impossible for you to ever work in this business again. Whether that’s going to be by ruining your name or just killing you outright you’re not sure, but it’s not going to be pretty.  
What is it about Samuel Drake that just turns your brain to mush and makes you forget every single lesson you’ve learned and mistake you’ve made? _Why_ did you have to meet him when you were nineteen and impressionable and were able to fall in love with someone at first sight? All of those stupid lovesick feelings make it impossible for you to be objective in his presence.  
You’re calling both him and Nate on repeat, having secured the numbers to their cell phones last night. Of course there’s no answer. You’re feeling like Nate might be your best bet here and so you leave him a voicemail, exaggerating the panic in your voice only slightly to really tug at his conscience.

“Nate, please, please, please talk to me. If I don’t get that necklace to my client he is going to _kill_ me. I’m not being dramatic here, okay, he’s actually going to have me murdered. He’s probably going to break both of my legs first just for good measure, you know? Does the name Mido Gamal mean anything to you because it should! He’s going to murder me and make it look like suicide, and do you want that on your conscience? Because-"

The robotic voice thanks you for your message and you hang up. Adrenaline and just plain old dread are coursing through your veins in equal measure and you jump a foot in the air when your phone buzzes with a response. It’s a text message from Nate.

**The Amari warehouse on Yemen st in Cairo but ull never get here in time. Sry Sam said u 2 figured smthing out. Hes a dick sumtimes.**

That’s all the way across the city, you need to be fast. You throw your clothes back on and tie your dirty hair up, grabbing your things and sprinting through the hotel, dodging around the security in the lobby as they try to slow you down and jumping onto your motorcycle, jamming the helmet onto your head. You start the engine and speed away, swerving in and out of traffic and trying to remember your way around. You roar down the roads on your bike, making it to your destination in record time but you know it still isn’t enough.  
You see a fancy American muscle car speed away from the line of warehouses on Yemen Street and your heart falls out of your ass. You’re too late. You stop your bike on the curb and try not to panic too much. Out come Sam and Nate from one of the buildings, seemingly having a bit of a spat. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters. They see you and Nate comes running towards you. You take off your helmet and wonder if you look as tired as you feel.

“(Y/N)!” Nate pants when he gets to you, “I’m sorry, I tried to stall as much as I could, but it’s not like our clients are the nicest people in the world either and-"

“It’s okay,” you say miserably, “it’s my own fault,”

“You’re right, you know,” Sam says as he catches up to his brother, “nice bike, by the way,”

You stare up at him incredulously, “You’re gloating? Seriously?”

“Hey, I told you you’d get a cut of our money, don’t get your panties all in a bunch,” he lights a cigarette nonchalantly.

You look to Nate, “Did you tell him about-?”

“You can save the whole Mido Gamal story. You’ve already lost, (Y/N), the necklace is long gone,”

You swing your leg off your bike and take a step towards him, “Sam,” you say, blinding fury scorching the word, “it’s not a ‘story’, you complete and utter asshole. It’s one-hundred-percent true, and the little cut of money you’re oh so kindly going to honour me with is not going to be enough to save my life,”

He watches you for a moment, realisation dawning on his face almost comically, “Wh-why didn’t you say anything?”

You look down at your boots in defeat, “I honestly don’t know, but it’s probably because I’m the most stupid person on the planet,” you say, “because I keep trusting you and trusting you even when all you do is give me reasons not to,”

You can’t look at him anymore, but you chance a glance at Nate. He looks between the two of you for a moment before nodding resolutely.

“You’ll come with us,” he says, “Gamal can’t kill you if he can’t find you and we’re pretty good at staying off the radar,”

Sam perks up at that, “Yeah, and we’ll have Victor spread some rumours about your death, too. At least until this dies down a little. C'mon, it might even be fun,”

You stand there, unsure. But really, what choice do you have? “Okay, fine,” you say.

“First thing’s first,” Sam says, flicking away his cigarette, “we’ll need to get rid of your bike. May I?”

“Knock yourself out,”

***

You reach the graveyard full of stones covered in pirate motifs and it’s so much as if Sam is here with you that you can almost hear his voice on the wind. You start looking for a good place to lay him down to sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

“I can’t believe this place was right under our noses the whole time,” you sigh, walking between the graves. They’re all adorned with cutlasses or skulls and crossbones, pretty typical pirate faire. “This is definitely where we should have been looking,” you chuckle ruefully.  
You knew this place existed, you’ve seen it on many maps of the cathedral and its grounds, but you never cared to pay it a visit until now, or to suggest anyone else did for that matter. You wander around, taking in the dreary but oddly peaceful sights, before you come across a gravestone that seems a touch more elaborate than its neighbours.

“Hello, Captain Avery,” you say, coming to a stop in front of a monument with a large stone skull in the centre and emblazoned with the name ‘Benjamin Bridgeman’, an alias of the old pirate, “you were not one for subtlety, were you?”

You bring the turquoise pendant out from your pocket and, after hesitating only slightly, loop the necklace over the skull so that it hangs down over the crossed bones.  
You stand there for a while, letting the snow settle in your hair, not saying anything. Before you know it, there are tears streaming down your face. You’ve been putting off thinking of what you wanted to say at this moment, and now the words come choking out.

“Sam,” you take a shuddering breath, “it has taken me far too long to get to this point, and this is really hard for me to even think, never mind say aloud- I can’t hold a candle for you anymore. I need to accept the fact that you’re never going to be in my arms again, because you’re in your _grave_. I need to stop playing with your shadow and start standing in the sunshine again. I’m always going to love you, that’s never going to change, but I really think it’s past time that I tell you goodbye,”

You should have done this years ago, found some sort of closure, just for your own sanity. But then again, if you were an expert at making decisions you probably would have missed out on the great love of your life in its entirety.  
You run your fingers over the grooves in the carved stone and try to remember the first time Sam told you the tale of Henry Avery and his legendary treasure.

***

“Don’t look so down, (Y/N),” Sam says, approaching you where you’re sitting by the window, watching the rain.

You’re stateside again, tucked away in a little motel off the beaten track. You feel like a skybird trapped in a cage far too small. Living in hiding is incredibly stifling. The company isn’t exactly helping either, the brothers are out more often than not, doing whatever it is that people whose lives aren’t in danger do. You have some laughs with Nate, he tells you about some of the interesting jobs they’ve been on, and he always makes sure to tell you about the times when his brother screwed things up somehow. You appreciate that.  
Then there’s the man himself. Sam Drake. The man you’re just as likely to take a bullet for as you are to pull the trigger on the gun yourself. Your girlish heart still melts for him, and it frustrates you to no end. Living in semi close quarters with him has been tough, particularly as you’ve been making a point to try and distance yourself from him. He makes you not yourself. And if you felt a pang of envy one morning when he came home smelling like another woman’s perfume then that’s no one’s business but your own.  
Tonight Nate’s out with a girl, and you were getting ready to spend another night alone when surprisingly Sam said he felt like hanging out. Nothing good can come of this.  
You realise Sam wants to sit down beside you on the couch so you scoot along to make room, looking at him as little as possible.

“I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up,” he says, showing you the book he has in his hands. It’s a journal bound in an off-white leather. The initials CM are embossed on the front.

Your curiosity piqued, you motion for him to continue.

“You ever heard of a pirate named Henry Avery?”

“I’ve heard the story of how he and his crew raped and tortured their female prisoners and that the women killed themselves by jumping overboard rather than suffering anymore,” you say, pretty sure that that isn’t what he is getting at.

Sam clears his throat uneasily, “Well, did you ever hear about the famous Gunsway heist?”

You nod, “It _is_ pretty legendary. It’s supposedly worth hundreds of millions, right?”

“ _Four-hundred-million_ ,” he says, and when you finally meet his eyes there is a passion there that you haven’t glimpsed before.

“Why are you telling me this?”

He seems to remember the book in his hands, “Right. This was my mom’s, she was researching Avery and the Gunsway heist, and me and Nathan have sort of been trying to finish what she started,” he opens up the book and flicks through some of the pages, holding it out so that you can see. There’s a multitude of hand-written notes and sketches, accompanied by maps with possible routes plotted onto them. Between some of the pages sit worn pieces of paper that look ancient, their contents written in swirly cursive script. If Sam goes on to tell you that the location of the treasure is hidden within this book, you'll believe him.

“This is amazing,” you say as you read through some of Sam’s mother’s musings, “but I still don’t understand what this has to do with me,”

Sam fidgets on the couch next to you, before putting the book down on the end table and taking your hands in his. You flinch a little, it’s been a week since Cairo and you don’t know how you feel about physical contact with this man at this moment in time.

“I want to bring you in on this with me and Nate,”

You search his eyes for any dishonesty, but you find none. Your brows knit together in confusion.

Before you can say anything, Sam speaks again, “Listen, (Y/N), I’ve screwed you over and it wasn’t cool. I want to make it up to you. I’m _going_ to make it up to you, so just let me,”

“It’s all right,” you say automatically, “I should have stolen the necklace myself, I don’t know what I was expecting,”

“Look, this isn’t even about you, okay? I’ve screwed over a lot of people, and it’s been all fun and games, but with you it’s different. I feel like I’ve kicked a puppy, y’know? Or like I’ve stolen some little kid’s toy or something,”

You squint at him, “You mean you feel guilty?”

He looks away from you as if he’s embarrassed all of a sudden, “Yes,”

You can’t help but laugh, “Samuel Drake, a repentant thief? Now I’ve seen everything!”

He looks at you again and when he sees that you’re smiling it makes him break out into a grin as well, “Hey, don’t mock me! I’m trying to apologise here,”

You gaze at him almost fondly, “Apologies usually go like this: I’m sorry,”

He leans in towards you, his breath warm on your face, “I’m sorry, (Y/N),” he whispers before closing the distance between you and ensnaring you in a kiss.  
You’ve had many kisses from Sam up to now, but almost all of them have been hot and wet, dirty in a way that this just isn’t. It’s soft and it’s sweet, and when he moves closer and wraps his arms around you you just sink into it like he’s quicksand. You loop your arms around his neck and run your fingers through his hair as the two of you get lost in each other. When you come apart you’re breathing heavily, and you both break into identical smiles.

“So, how does a hundred-million dollars sound?” Sam says.

You lean into him and he throws an arm around your shoulders, “It sounds like someone can’t divide four-hundred by three, but yeah, it sounds good. It should be enough to square my debt with Gamal, anyway,”

Sam’s hand is rubbing distracting circles into your skin, “You’re thinking too small, babe. You could buy yourself an island with that kind of scratch, live there like a queen, never have to think about Gamal again,”

You hum in amusement, “And who would you be? The court jester?”

“I was thinking more royal consort,” he waggles his eyebrows at you and you can’t help but giggle.

As Sam’s hands start wandering, you pull away slightly, all business. “So, what leads do you have so far?”

He leans back against the couch and groans, “Do we have to talk about this _now_?”

Taking pity on him you climb into his lap, pressing kisses to his forehead and cheeks before finding his lips. “Okay, maybe we can talk _after_ ,”

\---

It’s late and you’re in Sam’s bed. You lie naked in his arms as he smokes a cigarette and tells you stories about Henry Avery and other pirates that you’ve never heard of. Soon you know all of their names, the names of their ships, their sigils, their greatest battles. His voice is mesmerising and you will quite happily never sleep again if it means you can stay in this moment forever. You’re about to embark on the adventure of your life, you just know it. What could be more adventurous than loving a thief?

***

“I knew something was odd about this,” you mutter to yourself, “the skull is facing the wrong way,”

You reach your hand into the crevice and wrap your fingers around the skull. With a little bit of effort it rotates ninety degrees. There’s the rumbling of some kind of mechanism and then… nothing.

“Huh,” you look around but you can’t see anything out of the ordinary, “that was anticlimactic,”

You kiss your palm and then press your hand to the stone. You take a few steps away before turning back one last time.

“Goodbye,”


	10. Chapter 10

You step up onto the little wooden stool and reach up to the top of the dusty bookshelf. You grab a heavy cardboard box with both hands and heave it down onto your desk.  
You’re in your London penthouse apartment, in the study where you keep all of your old research materials for the adventures you had embarked upon. This particular box, marked ‘King John’ in black pen, was meant for your first quest after Sam died. You’d kept putting it off and putting it off, never quite feeling up to getting back out into the field, to put yourself on the line searching for something that might not be there to find at all. Treasure hunting had been soured for you permanently, or so you thought.  
Now, though, things are going to be different. Today is a new day and you’re feeling strangely _free_. You feel like yourself again, comfortable in your own skin and confident in your body and what it’s capable of doing.  
You cough, choking on the thick layer of dust as you wipe it away with your hand. This box has been up there for far too long, neglected but never forgotten. It lurked in the back of your mind always, whispering to you to jump back on the horse instead of lying there in the muck. You flop down into the plush leather chair, and pull the box towards you before finally, _finally_ open the lid. Dust particles dance in the sunlight as you reach inside to find the thick folders full of photographs and letters, spreading the contents out over the desk. At the bottom of the box is your journal where you have written down your own interpretations of the data, and your thoughts and ideas on where to start.

According to old records, King John of England was in possession of seventy-million dollars’ worth of gold, jewels, and artefacts. In 1216 he travelled with all of his soldiers and his wealth to Norfolk. While there, the king took ill and decided to return home to Newark Castle. He went the safe route around the Wash, but the men carrying his treasure took a shorter but more dangerous route, through the marshes. They were drowned there and the treasure was lost. King John died a week later, and all efforts to recover his treasure were in vain. The general consensus is that the carts went down in the marshes close to Sutton Bridge, but you’ve always harboured a different theory. After all, the treasure has never actually been found there, has it?

Now, with all the advances in technology and the internet, you have many more resources right at your fingertips than when you last gathered information on this case. You sink back into researcher-mode like it’s an old favourite pair of slippers and immerse yourself in all the old texts you can find. You’ve always been good at this part.

***

“Hey, Sam, what’s the deal with this letter?” you say, calling him over to you from where he’s doing push-ups on the floor on the other side of the room.

He springs to his feet and bounces over to you, a sheen of sweat glistening dreamily on his skin. “Which letter’s that, cutie-pie?”

You roll your eyes at the sickly sweet pet name but you’re smiling. Things have been going really well with you and Sam for the past few months, you’ve been like a real couple – holding hands whenever you’re sitting together, stealing kisses at every opportunity, making love every night before falling asleep in each other’s arms. You don’t know exactly what caused this change in him, that let him finally be gentle and soft and open with you, but the two of you have just fallen together as if it was always meant to be this way.  
In between the odd jobs that are deemed safe enough for you to take on, you’ve been trying to make headway through Sam’s mom’s journal. The woman had a lot of ideas, and it’s taken you quite a while to process it all. Towards the end of the book, tucked between the pages, you found the very intriguing letter in question.

You remember that you’re in the middle of a conversation. “This one, the Joseph Burnes one,” you show him what you’ve been looking at.

He skims over it briefly, “Oh yeah, he was Avery’s first mate,” he says, before dropping to the ground again and beginning a set of sit-ups.

“I know that,” you lean back in your chair and watch Sam absently. His shirt has ridden up and you can see his abs ripple under his sweat slicked skin as he moves and it makes you clench with want. _There’ll be time for that later_.

“Oh, the uh ‘riches of paradise’ part?”

“Exactly,” you say, “have you looked into this?”

“Yeah, of course,” You wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t.

“And? Did you manage to figure out which prison he’s talking about?” you say impatiently.

“Yeah, I’m more than just a pretty face, doll. I know you wouldn’t expect someone who looks like _this_ to also be a genius but-“

“ _Sam_ ,”

“What?” he finally sits still but when you look at him he’s avoiding your eyes.

“Where is it? What’s there now?”

“It’s uh- a prison. In Panama,”

A black cloud of dread swoops down over you like a murder of crows. “Wonderful,” you sigh, “because as everyone knows, getting in and out of a Panamanian prison is notoriously easy and perfectly safe,”

“Hey-"

“When were you going to tell me this? Why have I been wasting my time going through all of this when you already knew where it leads?”

He finally looks at you, albeit sheepishly. “I wanted you to be on the same page as me and Nathan. You’ve seen everything we’ve seen now, and it always helps to have a fresh pair of eyes,”

You soften your gaze slightly. “All right. So, do you have a plan or something? How exactly do you figure we’re going to get in and find Burnes’ cell?”

“We’ve had several plans,” he says, rolling his shoulders, “all of which fell through,”

For a moment you’re imagining the three of you scaling some prison wall with grappling hooks and it makes you smile. Then you imagine getting shot to pieces by prison guards and your smile fades.

“I don’t like this, Sam,” you say uneasily, “I don’t like this at all,”

“Baby, baby, hey-“ he gets up again and comes to you, wrapping you into a warm and slightly sweaty hug, “don’t worry about it, everything’s gonna be fine. Besides, you think Henry Avery would have become one of the richest pirates in history by playing it safe?”

This does little to soothe you. “You’re right, but I don’t think he’s really the best role model,”

Sam huffs a little and breaks the hug. He moves to sit in front of you on the desk. “Well, what about you? You need the money to buy your life back, right? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, fighting harder?”

You frown. You haven’t thought about Mido Gamal in weeks. You’ve been so wrapped up in Sam that you’d almost forgotten that you have a stake in this too. You can’t continue this relationship if some tycoon has you killed, after all. “ _Fine_ ,” you say, shrugging your shoulders, “what do we do now?”

He places his hands on your shoulders and looks into your eyes intently. “We get into that prison, and we get rich,”

You hesitate, teetering on the edge of danger before deciding to say ‘fuck it’ and jumping in headfirst. “I might know a guy,” you say.

***

You catch yourself in a yawn and check the time. It’s past midnight, no wonder you can scarcely keep your eyes open. The time has simply flown by, an excitement you haven’t felt in far too long keeping you energised. You stand up and stretch your limbs, yawning again. You leave the study and make your way to your bedroom. You’ve got a big day ahead of you.


	11. Chapter 11

You drum your fingers along the steering wheel of your car- another Range Rover, but this time it’s one that you own. Your once perfect manicure is chipped at the edges and there’s dirt deep under your fingernails that just won’t come out, but for once you’re able to revel in the imperfections. Scrabbling around the hills in Scotland has revitalised you, the sea air breathing a new life into your lungs. No longer do you feel like an empty mannequin, you’re a living, feeling human being again.  
You’re heading north, and there’s a great wide world of adventure ahead of you, if only you could get out of London. You tried driving around the traffic as much as possible but it’s caught up with you now and you can do nothing but sit and wait for the cars in front of you to inch forward slowly.  
At last you leave the traffic jams of the city behind, and you’re speeding down highways lined with brown hedges and leafless trees. You’ve picked entirely the wrong time of year to start this endeavour, but like a wise man once said; strike while the iron’s cold- by the time you’ve waited around for it to get hot, you’re too late.  
You’re going to a place called King’s Lynn, the last place where the crown jewels were seen intact before King John took ill and they were subsequently lost forever. You’re meeting with a historian who shares your belief that the cartloads of treasure may not be under the marshes at Sutton Bridge at all.  
Snowflakes drift in the air and along the road but there isn’t enough to settle. Still, you’re thankful for your cars heated seating. You settle in for the remaining hour of your drive, tapping the steering wheel in tune with the radio and letting your mind wander a little.

***

“You look nice,” Sam says in surprise as you enter the room.

You’re a bit more dressed up than usual, in a white floral sundress and strappy heels in a complementary pink that matches your lipstick.

“Thanks, now quick, put these on you two,” you dump the shopping bags you have with you onto the coffee table.

Nate gets up and has a look through the bags, holding up one of the new shirts. “What’s going on?”

“Well, you remember me telling you about Rafe Adler?” you find the pants you picked out for Sam and shove them into his arms, “he wants to meet us at the Plaza for drinks in about an hour, so will you both _please_ get dressed?”

“This is great, we’re finally moving forward,” Sam says, grinning as he finally starts changing into his new clothes.

Nate, on the other hand, doesn’t look so enthused. “You really think we can trust this guy?”

You pause where you’re fixing your makeup, meeting Sam’s eyes uneasily in the mirror. You clear your throat, “I think we can trust him to be exactly what he is; filthy rich, which is precisely what we need right now,”

“Why are we getting all dressed up, anyway?” Sam says, eyeing your dress.

You hear the real question there; _why are you getting all dressed up for some rich guy?_ You shake your head, “Did you not hear me say the Plaza? Besides, we should go in there looking as professional and unthreatening as possible, we need him to think ‘yes, those are three people that I will gladly enter into a business venture with,’”

Half an hour later, when Nate goes to get the car ready, you pull Sam aside for a moment. “I know what I said before, but listen to me,” you look deeply into his eyes, willing him to take you seriously, “Rafe- take his money, take his time, but _don’t trust him any more than you need to_ ,”

He nods, “I get it, but don’t say anything to Nathan, all right? He did not like the idea of bringing someone new in,”

“He was all right with me joining though, wasn’t he?” you ask, cocking your head.

“He was after I told him that I loved you and you weren’t just some girl,” he shrugs.

Your eyes widen and your stomach does a backflip. “What?”

“When I told him that I- oh,” he scratches the back of his neck, “I love you, (Y/N),”

You throw your arms around his neck and pull him into a kiss, forgetting your lipstick and smearing it over his lips. “I love you too,” you smile wider than you have in your whole life.

“I kind of thought you already knew,” he says, wiping his mouth, but smiling all the same.

You shake your head incredulously, “How am I supposed to know anything if you don’t tell me? Idiot,”

You hold hands as you walk to the car, a spring in your step.

For the last few weeks you’ve been in tentative talks with Rafe Adler, a young billionaire with an interest in the relics of antiquity. You’ve worked for him before, in fact all of his major finds were actually discovered by you. For a pretty hefty fee, you let him take all of the credit for your hard work. This is the first time you’ve contacted him to bring him in on something, and you need it to go well. Your life depends on it, in fact.

\---

“Good to see you again, Rafe,” you smile sweetly as he kisses the back of your hand.

“And it’s good to see that the rumours of your untimely demise where just that,” he returns your smile but his seems wolfish somehow.

“If you could keep that to yourself, I’d appreciate it,”

“But of course,” he pulls a chair out for you and you sit. He takes the seat beside you and you mouth a quick apology to Sam as he sits opposite you. He’s frowning like thunder.  
“So, (Y/N),” Rafe appraises Sam and Nate, “are you going to introduce us?”

You clear your throat, glaring at Sam until he eases up his frown. “Rafe Adler, please meet Samuel and Nathan Drake.”

They all shake hands across the table, and when they are done Rafe casually lays his arm across the back of your chair. You see Sam clench his fists and you quickly try to conduct some damage control.

“Sam and I are actually-“ you begin.

“-engaged,” Sam finishes.

Three sets of eyes fix on Sam. Your glare intensifies and you would slam your head into the table if it wouldn’t officially ruin this meeting.

“Oh, really?” Rafe says, signalling for a waiter, “Well, let’s get some champagne, drink a toast to the happy couple,”

“That’s really not necessary,” you hold your hands up as you try to dissuade him.

“You’re not wearing a ring,” he says, eyes eagle sharp.

You accept a flute of champagne from the waiter, fumbling for an answer, “Well, actually-“

“I’m going to have her pick out a stone from Avery’s treasure,” Sam says, not missing a beat, “have it custom made into a ring. Nothing but the best for my fiancée,”

“How romantic,” Rafe says, and you can’t tell if he’s actually buying this or not.

You catch Nate snickering into his drink and you roll your eyes, resisting the urge to down the champagne like a shot.

“Can we just get down to business, please?” you say, your forced smile slipping.

“Of course, of course,” Rafe nods along, “let’s get you that engagement ring,”

Sam bristles again and you would kick him under the table if you thought no one would notice. “We need to get inside a Panamanian prison,” he says, “you think you could swing that?”

“Should be simple enough, for the three of us, anyway,” Rafe motions to himself and the brothers.

Again three people at the table are confused.

“What about me?” you say, just as Nate says “What, you’re coming?” with a scowl on his face.

Rafe addresses you first. “Well, it is a men’s prison, right? It’ll be easy to get us in, I can bribe the warden. We’ll pose as prisoners and that will give us ample time to look around. You on the other hand, you throw a spanner into the works, so to speak,”

You sit back in your chair, humming thoughtfully. You’re annoyed to be counted out of your own plan, but you have to admit it makes sense. You sigh but nod your head in agreement.

Rafe continues, “As for myself, I admit I usually like to take more of a distant stance in ventures like this, but for something this big? I just have to be there myself. Is that going to be a problem?” he looks between the brothers.

They share a look before Sam reaches his hand out for Rafe, “It’s a deal,” he says.

\---

"I cannot believe you did that," you say when the three of you arrive back at the motel.

Nate excuses himself to his room, and you follow Sam into the bedroom that the two of you have been sharing.

"I just couldn't stand the way he was all over you," Sam huffs, lighting a cigarette.

"He was not all over me,"

"He kissed your hand!"

"That's just what weird rich people do!"

The two of you glare at each other from opposite ends of the room for a few moments.

You chuckle to yourself, "I only find out that you love me this afternoon and now we're engaged? This is all moving so fast for me Samuel!" You say girlishly, batting your eyelashes at him.

He moves towards you, "You saying you don't want a million dollar wedding?" he winks.

"I'm saying I think you're crazy, but I love you anyway,"

"I love you too, doll,"

***

“You have reached your destination,” the navigator says as you pull into the parking lot of your hotel. You check yourself in the rear view mirror, not too bad. You’re meeting the historian William Arthur in the hotel lobby and you want to make a good impression; from the pictures you’ve seen online, he’s pretty cute.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

As it turns out, William Arthur is _incredibly_ cute. Curly dark hair and the deepest blue eyes, you could just spread him on a cracker. At twenty-eight, he’s a little young for you, but from the glances he shoots your way every few minutes, he doesn’t seem to mind. You’re up in his hotel room, old books and papers spread out on the coffee table in front of you. You lounge on the plush cream sofa, and he brings you a glass of merlot. He takes a seat beside you.

“I can’t tell you how exciting it is to meet someone who shares my ideas about this whole thing,” Will says, his British accent clipped and plummy. What is it with you and British guys lately?

“It’s nice to finally get the ball rolling,” you say, taking a sip of the wine, “like I told you over the phone, I’ve been sitting on this one for quite some time,”

“Well here we have everything I have collected so far pertaining to King John the Bad and his crown jewels, and of course the fateful trip he made here to Norfolk and back,”

“This is quite a substantial collection, it’s going to take all night to go through all of this,”

“Yes, it might,” he’s looking at you now like he’s going to ravish you right here on the couch, and even though a moment ago you might have found it flattering for some reason you feel an intense pang of what can only be described as guilt.

You push those feelings as far down as you possibly can, forcing a smile. You laugh softly and toss your hair back over your shoulder. You know how to play this game, even if you don’t always win.

***

“I can’t believe you’ll be gone for a month,” you murmur into Sam’s chest as he holds you in the afterglow of a round of rigorous coupling.

“A month _tops_ ,” he says, kissing the top of your head and drawing soothing circles into your skin with his fingertips.

“I’m kind of bummed out I don’t get to come,”

“You just did,” he drawls, his hand still moving lazily.

You huff and sit up to look him in the eye, “You know what I mean, idiot,” you stick your tongue out at him and he draws it into his mouth for a really filthy kiss.

His face is surprisingly serious when he pulls away. “It’s for the best, you’ll be much safer here. If I’m going into that festering hellhole for a month, I need to know that you’re safe,”

You soften your gaze and take his lips in a sweet little kiss. “I know, I know. I just wish I didn’t have to miss out on all the fun,”

“I’m going to prison, (Y/N), I’m not going to be having any fun,”

You raise an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, I mean I’ll probably have a _little_ fun-“

You’re staying in a motel again, but now you’re in Panama. It’s amazing to you how motels seem to be the same no matter where in the world you are. The four of you- that’s Rafe, Nate, Sam, and yourself- are supposed to be getting a good night’s sleep in preparation for the big day tomorrow. You know for a fact that Nate will be too excited to sleep, he’s like a little kid that way. You’re not a hundred percent sure that Rafe _does_ sleep. You’re too afraid to close your eyes in case Sam’s gone when you open them. Even though you know it’s ridiculous, since you know, you’re driving them to the prison in the morning.

“I’m going to miss you,” you say, waking Sam from his doze. Of course _he_ has no trouble sleeping.

“I’m going to miss you too, doll,” he says, tightening his arms around you.

“Don’t forget about me,” you mumble, causing Sam to roll you both over until he is on top of you.

“Are you kidding? I’m going to be dreaming about this face-“ he kisses your forehead, “this body-“ his kisses travel down between your breasts, “this _ass_ -“ he grabs a cheek in his hand and squeezes, “and _especially_ this little pussy-“ he kisses the lips and brings a finger up to tease at your entrance, “ _every night_ ,”

You moan and spread your legs, letting him see everything that you are.

“Let’s make tonight count,” he says to your cunt before licking a hot wet stripe from your core up to your clit.

You’re still sensitive from the two orgasms he wringed from you earlier, and your whole body shudders when he starts circling over your clit with the tip of his tongue. When it gets a little too much, you push his head away and he goes lower, tonguing the entrance to your pussy instead. You gasp in appreciation. He moans in response, deep in his throat, and he knows exactly what that sound does to you. You grind your hips into his face, and now he’s really going to town, French kissing your clit, eating your pussy like he’s starving for it.  
He slides two fingers inside and it’s just enough to tease but not enough to stretch, but he starts pumping them and it’s _good_. You’re moaning and whimpering with every breath now and _yes_ he’s found that gorgeous rhythm with his fingers and tongue that’s going to make you come. He's moaning now too, urging you on, _come for me come for me come for me_.

And you do.

As you float down from that height, a feather caught on a light breeze, you laugh happily to yourself, a dopey smile plastered to your face. Sam crawls up between your legs until he’s looking down into your eyes and he’s smiling too.

“You’re amazing,” he says, his eyes soft.

“That’s my line,” you say breathlessly.

“You can say it when I’m through with you,” and with that he lines up his cock and _sinks_ into the tight wet heat.

The pure rush of lust that jolts through you startles you, you really didn’t think that you were going to be able to come again, but the way his cock fills you up is so beautiful that you think you just might.  
He lowers himself onto his elbows as he drives his hips into you. You raise your head a little to kiss him and now your tongues twist and flick against each other.  
He’s alternating rhythms, sometimes hard and fast and all you can do is wrap your legs around his waist and thrash your head from side to side, and other times he’s so slow and deep that he pushes all of the air out of your lungs.  
You open your eyes to look up at his face and that’s when you know that you _are_ going to come. His eyes are scrunched shut, his brows pulled together in a frown. His mouth hangs open as he pants above you and there’s little moans and growls mixed in there and you just _can’t_ -

“I’m coming,” you mewl, fisting your hands in his hair and locking your legs behind his back as you spasm uncontrollably with pleasure.

All at once the tautness in your body evaporates and your arms and legs fall to the mattress.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sam sighs into your neck, pressing sloppy kisses there.

His hands are clenched into fists on either side of your head and you bring your own hands up to soothe them. He loosens his grip just long enough to intertwine your fingers, and he’s looking down at you again with his impossibly gorgeous face.

“Come on, baby,” you whisper to him, your eyes meeting his just as your words take effect.

He stiffens and a look of pure love passes across his face, and he’s emptying his entire being into you. He collapses onto you and you hold him there, stroking his back and running your fingers through his hair.

“You’re amazing,” you say, and you both laugh.

\---

The whole drive to the prison has been awful. You told yourself you could handle it, but now the prospect of saying goodbye for a whole month is too much to bear.  
You stop the car a little way away from the prison itself, on a little dirt road.

Rafe is the first to exit the car. “You should leave now,” he says to you as he shuts the door.

“Be safe,” you say, giving him the finger when his back is turned.

Next is Nate. He opens your door and leans in to give you a big hug, “I’ll keep an eye on him. Look after yourself,” he tousles your hair as if he thinks he’s older than you or something.

And finally- _Sam_. You hop out of the car and throw your arms around him one last time. He looks so dazzling painted with the morning light, and you don’t think you’ll ever see another man who can make your heart hurt just by looking at him.

“I love you and I’ll miss you,” he says, kissing you softly, “I’ll see you in a month, I promise,”

You nod, furiously wiping tears from your eyes, “I love you too and I’ll miss you too,” you say, “and you’d better,”

You get back into the car before you ruin the whole plan. Sam does not keep his promise.

***

“You know what? I’m beat, I’m gonna go to bed,” you say to Will just as he leans in to kiss you. You dodge out of the way and jump up from the couch. “Good night, let’s continue work on this in the morning,”

You’re out of the room before things can get too awkward.

You’ve finally got comfortable in your own skin and you think you need a bit more time before you’re going to be comfortable touching someone else’s. Somehow thoughts of Sam are still dragged to the surface and that’s not fair on either you or Will.

As you approach your hotel room, you frown. The door is ajar.


	13. Chapter 13

Your heart’s beating a little faster as you push the door all the way open, your eyes scanning the dimly lit room cautiously. There’s a man standing by the window, his back to you as he looks out on the street below. You reach an arm out to grab one of the heavy pewter candlesticks that sits on the dresser, its weight comforting in your palm. You take a step into the room, kicking the door closed behind you with a bang to alert the intruder so that you can see who it is you’re up against.

He turns around.

The candlestick falls to the floor with a clang.

It’s _Sam_.

He’s walking towards you now and you can feel your knees going weak.

“If you’re real,” you say, your vision swimming, “you’ll catch me,”

Your legs give out from under you and everything’s black.

***

This can’t be true. It can’t. _it can’t it can’t it can’t it can’t it can’t._

“What do you mean he’s _gone_?”

Nate’s in pieces on the floor, his eyes red raw and hollow looking.

Rafe looks as un-put together as you’ve ever seen him, his hair’s a mess and he’s covered in dirt. He has some weird crucifix thing in his hands. “He’s dead, (Y/N). He was shot during our escape,”

You’re crying as loudly and as hard as you ever have. _Sam promised he’d be back he promised he promised he promised_.

“You two pull yourselves together, we need to get out of Panama,” Rafe says sharply.

You barely hear him over the sound of your world falling apart around you.

***

You come to lying on the hotel bed, on top of the covers. You remember.

“Sam!” you jolt upright.

Warm hands land on your shoulders and push you back down gently. “Woah there, baby. Don’t get up so fast,”

You brave a glance at his face and your eyes fill with tears.

 _It’s Sam_. _He’s really here_. His face is much more lined, and his hairline has receded slightly, but it’s definitely him. He looks just how he did that night at the auction.

“Don’t cry, darlin’. It’s okay, I’m here,” he gathers you up into his arms and rocks you as you sob.

“Have I gone insane?” you whisper.

“You’re fine, you’re fine, everything’s okay,” he shushes you.

You wipe your face and try to calm yourself. “You died. They told me you died,”

He pulls up his shirt to expose his stomach. There are three puffy scars there. Bullet wounds. “They shot me while we were running for it, and I fell from this roof. Nathan and Rafe had to leave me behind,”

You stare at the scars, not daring to believe. “But Rafe called the warden,” you say, tentatively reaching your hand out to run your fingers over the scars, “everyone we spoke to said you were dead,”

He reaches down and takes your hand in his, bringing it up to his face where he kisses your palm. “They needed someone to take the fall for the murdered guard. But I’m here now, I’m here with you,”

You sit up, slowly this time, and you cup his cheek in your hand, pulling him in for an uncertain kiss. As soon as your lips meet all hesitancy goes out of the window. It feels like the exhilaration of adventure and the comfort of coming home all in one, and really, that’s everything that Sam is.

“You really are here,” you say when you break apart, “how did you get out?”

He avoids your gaze. “Rafe bribed the warden again, got me released. He must have got wind that I was still alive somehow,”

“I saw you at the Rossi Estate. You stole the Saint Dismas cross! Why didn’t you come to me? How long have you been back? Where you in Scotland?” There’s a million and one questions and you can’t unmuddle them in your brain.

“Easy, tiger,” he chuckles, “does this place have room service? I will answer all of your questions, I promise, but I am going to need a drink,”

Fifteen minutes later you’re sitting on the Persian rug in front of the electric fire, watching the artificial flames dance back and forth and sipping on your second glass of wine. Sam cracks open a beer and comes to sit beside you.

“How is it possible that you look exactly the same as you did all those years ago?” He murmurs into your ear, brushing your hair away from your neck and gently kissing you there.

You laugh to yourself, “I do not. Also, I’ve had a _lot_ of work done,”

“Really?” he raises his eyebrows.

“So have you, from the looks of it,” you run your fingers over the tattoo on his neck, “didn’t I tell you not to come back with a cool prison tattoo?”

He grins, “God, I’ve missed you,”

The alcohol has soothed your frazzled nerves a little bit, enough for you to ask the questions you really want the answers to, anyway. “How long have you been out of prison?”

He looks up at you, a contrite expression on his worn face, “Two years,” he says.

Your face creases into a frown, “Two years? Where were you? Why didn’t you contact me?”

“I wanted to, _believe me,_ I wanted to,”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because Rafe told me that you were married!”

Your eyes widen, “What?”

He sighs, “He told me you were moved on and settled down, married with a couple of kids. I wasn’t gonna intrude on that,”

“That bastard,” you say, gritting your teeth, “I’m going to kill him,”

“Actually, about that-“ he scratches the back of his neck, “Rafe’s- he died,”

“What? What the hell happened? And do you mean _dead_ dead or dead like you were?”

He laughs quietly to himself and takes a pull on his beer, “I’m pretty sure it’s the first one, ain’t nobody coming back from that. (Y/N),” he puts down his beer and takes your hands in his, “we did it. Me and Nathan. We found Avery’s treasure,”

You can’t quite summon the level of excitement you think he’s expecting right now. “That’s where you’ve been all this time, chasing that damn treasure,”

“Yeah but-“

“I saw you in Italy. Did you see me?”

“I did. You looked so beautiful. It killed me to think that you were married,”

“You have no idea how much that messed me up,” you shake your head ruefully, “I really thought I’d gone mad,”

“I really wanted to just walk right up to you, punch your husband in the face, and sweep you off your feet,” he laughs, “and to think I was just glaring at some random guy all evening,”

“God, I spoke to Rafe that night. He knew you were alive and he said nothing,”

“Yeah well, the guy was an asshole, we already knew that,”

You lapse into silence for a few moments, before curiosity gets the better of you. “All right, tell me everything. What happened after you stole the Saint Dismas cross?”

He grins, “Okay, well get strapped in ‘cause you’re in for a wild ride,”

\---

“I can’t believe you lied to your brother like that,” you say, shaking your head.

“That’s what you’re taking away from that story?” he says incredulously, “(Y/N), we found _Libertalia_ , the legendary pirate colony! We found Avery’s ship and all of his _treasure!_ ”

“And how many people had to die so that you can say that?” you sigh, “Do you even have anything to show for it?”

“Well, actually, I brought you something,” he reaches into the pocket of his coat and withdraws a ring.

It’s stunning. 17th century gold, with a large square-cut emerald in the centre, surrounded by smaller diamonds.

“Oh, my god,” you gasp.

“When Nathan told me that you weren’t married, I knew I had to bring you something. I wanted to make up for the fact that you weren’t there with us,”

“It sounds like it got pretty dangerous,” you say softly, “maybe it all worked itself out for the best,”

He’s still holding the ring, “I want you to have this, (Y/N), I know it’s not the million-dollar wedding I promised you, but it’s a start,”

“Shut up, idiot,” you say, tears in your eyes again, and you curl your limbs around him like a koala. “I’ve loved you since I was nineteen years old, the only thing that matters is that you’re here now,” you kiss his stubbly cheek, “I would like to wear the ring, though,”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW.

As expected, the two of you end up on the bed. As is not expected, however, you’re both fully clothed and barely touching. Your heart is pounding and in the quiet of the room you wonder if Sam can hear it.

“So,” you say into the dark.

“So,” Sam props himself up on an elbow, facing you. “We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to,” his voice is soft and tender and you can’t believe that you’re allowed to hear it again.

“I want to,” you say quietly, “do you want to?”

“Oh, baby, I want to,” he inches closer to you along the mattress, “I’ve been thinking about this night for fifteen long years,”

“Even for the last two when you thought I was married?” It’s been on your mind all evening, even though you know you have no right or reason to be upset. It’s not like you’ve been a nun all these years.

He sighs, “Yes, even the last two years. I won’t go into details, but trust me, you’ve got nothing to worry about,”

You feel a warm glowy feeling in your chest. In the back of your mind you consider telling him about what happened between you and Rafe, but you can’t bring yourself to ruin the moment. You can save that conversation for later.  
Sam scoots up even closer to you, and slowly brings his hand up to your face. His palm is warm on your cheek, but not as warm as his lips are when they meet yours. You kiss softly and sweetly for a few moments, and you can feel the heat soothe your aching heart.

“I love you so much,” you say, and you can’t help but laugh quietly. The euphoria is filling you up in places that you didn’t even know where empty, healing wounds you thought were long since scarred over.

“I love you too, (Y/N),” he says, his voice a low rumble now, “let me make love to you,”

“ _Yes_. Please,”

He rolls you onto your back and leans down to kiss you again. This time there’s a scorching heat behind it, and as you press your lips against his, the pain of the last fifteen years is burned away at last. The wound has finally been cauterised. He reaches a hand up under your shirt, sliding over your tummy and upwards to hold one of your breasts in his palm. He squeezes gently and lets out a huff of air.

“God, I need to see you,”

You’re shaking from excitement as he pulls your shirt up and over your head, leaving you in just your bra. You reach around and unclasp it yourself, letting your breasts bounce free. You blush, everything looks a little different since Sam saw it last.

“They look amazing,” he caresses them with both hands, “feel amazing too,”

“Thanks, they were expensive,” you laugh breathily as he rolls your nipples between his fingers.

He raises an eyebrow but you don’t give him time to comment, instead you pull at the hem of his sweatshirt, trying to get it over his head. He helps you get it off and _wow_ , he makes forty look good.

“I’ve uh- had a lot of time to work out over the years,” he chuckles as you run your hands over his rock hard stomach.

You kneel up on the bed to match him and wrap your arms around his neck, going in for another kiss. It’s gorgeous to feel his chest against yours, and you press yourself as close to him as you can without crawling inside his skin. You lower your arms and unbuckle his belt, pressing open-mouthed kisses along his throat. You feel his Adam’s apple bob against your lips and, smiling, you place a kiss there.

“Hey, be gentle with me, baby,” he says as you pull his cock out of his jeans, “I’m not twenty-five anymore, you know,”

You scoff, “I’ll try not to break you, old man,” you laugh at the face he pulls and you begin jerking his cock, watching his expression change.

“I’ll show you old,” he says, groaning as he prises your hand from his cock, and he pushes you down onto the bed, making the mattress bounce. He unbuttons your jeans and tugs them off, your underwear following, and throws them across the room. He pushes your thighs apart and sucks in a breath when he sees your pussy. “Still so pretty,” he says, “or have you had this done too?”

You laugh, “No, I haven’t had labiaplasty,”

He laughs too for a moment, before testing the waters with his thumb. “Fuck, you still get so wet for me, baby,”

You sigh contentedly, spreading your legs wider as he tickles your clit, “I haven’t reached menopause just yet,”

All joking is pushed aside as Sam pushes a finger inside. You moan. It’s not enough.

“Sam,” you whine.

“Yeah? Tell me what you want, darlin’, anything, you can have it,”

“Consider the last fifteen years foreplay, okay? I need you inside,”

“I can’t say no to that,” he breathes, and he nestles himself between your spread legs.

He pushes his hips forward, sliding his cock between your lips and getting it nice and slick. Just as you’re about to tell him to hurry, he lines up with you and presses his cock inside.  
It’s been far, far too long since you’ve felt this good. It’s like you’re only whole when he’s inside you and you feel more alive than you have for a very long time.  
You can’t help but cry out, and he shushes you gently, resting on his elbows and nuzzling into your neck as he rocks his hips into you carefully. Your legs wrap around his hips and your arms go around his shoulders, holding him to you as you move together.  
A part of you thought that you were in for a real hard fucking tonight, the pent up frustrations of thirteen years, but this is something else entirely. He’s treating you like something precious and fragile, like if he’s too rough with you you’ll fly apart into a thousand pieces. He might be right.

“Sam,” you pant, your breath tickling his sweat-slicked skin.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re with me, I’ve got you,” he’s kissing your neck, your ear, your cheek, everywhere that he can reach, “you feel so good. You’re always so good to me, (Y/N),”

It’s impossible to reply, you’re too choked up on lust and raw emotion. You hold him tighter to you and squeeze your eyes shut, tears leaking from the corners. It’s all too much, it’s so overwhelming, and yes, he’s picking up the pace, rolling his hips faster, more urgently now. You’re moaning, these little high-pitched, breathy noises that you didn’t know you could still make, and it’s so good. It’s white-hot blinding and ice-cold burning all in one and you wriggle and writhe, panting and moaning as you take the plunge over the edge into oblivion.  
Sam’s moaning into your ear, hot and heavy, the telling little gasps and growls that mean he’s about to come. You card your fingers through his hair with one hand, using the other to scratch your nails down his back. That does it.

“Oh,” he shudders on top of you and inside you, and he’s coming.

You hold him close as the both of you come back to yourselves. He raises his head and kisses you, and this right here is the moment where you feel truly complete.

\---

You blink in the sunlight. You forgot to close the curtains last night and now the light comes streaming into the room. It’s a beautiful winter’s morning. The love of your life stands by the open window, smoking a cigarette. You get up from bed and go to him.

“You can’t smoke in here,” you say as you hug yourself to his side.

“Hey, I opened the window,” he says softly, kissing the top of your head.

You reach up and take the cigarette from his hand and his eyebrows raise through the roof when you take a drag.

“You don’t smoke,” he says incredulously.

“Fifteen years, Sam,” you say, winking as you take another drag, “things change,”

“But not this,” he says, squeezing your hand in his.

The emerald in your ring catches the light. “No, not this,” you smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it! I don't think I'm done with this pairing though, it was far too much fun to write. Thank you to everyone who commented or left kudos, it really motivated me to keep writing <3


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